This guidance is for creating temporary groups for your pupils’ in attendance during the national lockdown, while still showing pupils in their regular classes in the system.
To show temporary classes as the pupil’s class throughout the system you might prefer to suspend your existing classes and create ‘bubble classes’. Guidance notes on how to do this can be found here: How to create temporary ‘bubble’ classes.
Creating school groups
To create temporary groups that do not affect your regular classes, go to Pupils > Groups and click the + symbol next to School Groups.
Give the group a name that identifies it as a temporary ‘bubble’ group and make sure you tick Timetabled Teaching Group and set the academic year to 2021/22, then hit Save.
Once the group is created you can add pupils to it in the normal way. Just click the +/- symbol to display the pupil picker.
Use the Show: drop-down box to select a year group or your whole school. Tick the names you want to add in to the group and then click the left arrow to add them in to the group.
Add the teacher that should be attached to the group by clicking the Users tab above your group list and following these same steps.
Using temporary groups
Your temporary groups will now show on registers for your teachers to record attendance marks. As your classes are unaffected they will show alongside the temporary groups. Make sure you advise your teachers to only record attendance in their ‘bubble’ groups.
You can filter to your temporary groups on any screen with Filters in the top-left. Scroll down in your filters and click the Pupil Groups tab. You can then tick your bubble group to filter.
You can also message groups easily by going to Messaging (either SMS or Email) and selecting School groups in the drop-down box on the right-hand-side.
Bear in mind, screens that group or sort specifically by Class will continue to do this using the pupil’s regular classes. This includes the office register, school meals and the fire register.
If you want these screens to function with your bubble groups, you might consider our alternative method: How to suspend classes and create temporary ‘bubble’ classes.