Taking a board to Excel

Open the class's Mastery Board, press Excel beside its name at the top, and choose Export Board. The file saves to your computer — on an iPad it goes to Files — named after the class, the board and the day, and opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.

What is on each tab

• Summary, first: every child down the side, every unit across, a whole-year average for each and a class average row — the Summary tab, on a sheet.
• Reports: every objective and standard the class has been measured on, weakest first, with the class average and each child's average on it, the way the Reports tab reckons them.
• One tab for every unit, in the order of the strip. Above each question sit its objective, standard and lesson. Then every child's marks, their score out of the unit, how many questions they were asked, their percent and level, whether they were absent, the letters and words they missed, and your notes. Class averages sit underneath.

The colours and the arithmetic

The green, amber and red are the app's own, and they follow the numbers. Every score, percent, level and class average is a formula: change a mark on a unit's tab and everything that reads it changes with it, on that tab and on the Summary and Reports. The percentages are worked out the way the app works them out — each question as a share of what it is out of, averaged over the questions that were asked, never over a fixed total; a rubric level counts as 100, 80, 60 or 40 — so the file and the screen never disagree.

A blank cell is not assessed and counts for nothing, the same as on screen, and a child marked absent or exempt on a unit counts for nothing on it. To the right of each unit's tab, hidden, are the columns those formulas read: each mark as a share. Unhide the columns to look; nothing on the tab is a number you cannot trace.

Every tab is locked except the cells you type in: the marks, the Status column and the Notes. A formula, a heading or a child's row can't be changed by accident, which is what keeps the file readable when it comes back through Import Scores. You can still click any cell to see its formula, and widen a column or a row.

The file is a copy of the board as it stood when you pressed the button. Marks typed into it reach the board only through Import Scores: see Bringing marks back from Excel. Export again whenever you want a newer copy.

Bringing a file back in as a template

A board exported this way can also be imported as a new template, from Board Templates: its units marked as Questions or Items come back with their questions, standards, lessons and children, and an Items unit with its marks. A unit marked as a rubric or a checklist is skipped there, and the import says so.