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For families in the Fort Bend Independent School District (FBISD), staying up-to-date on students’ academic progress, school events, and district announcements across grades K-12 presents an ongoing challenge. However, FBISD’s Skyward student portal serves as an invaluable resource for parents and guardians to stay informed and engaged.
This online platform acts as a centralized hub for grades, assessments, attendance records, assignments, school calendars, and more. By accessing these tools, families can monitor student performance, identify needs, and support learning from home. Here’s a guide on how FBISD parents can maximize Skyward to stay in the loop all year long.
Monitoring Academic Performance
Arguably Skyward’s most robust offering, the gradebook feature enables parents to monitor student progress in current courses. The guidebook compiles assignment scores, exam results, project grades, and participation points for accurate grade calculations. Parents can review this data to pinpoint subject areas where students excel or struggle.
Seeing an average dropping? The system also exposes missing work. This visibility prompts conversations around obstacles to completion and time management barriers.
Beyond submission rates, parents can also see teacher feedback on assignments submitted through Skyward. Reviewing grades and comments regularly allows parents to adapt their support strategies to meet evolving needs.
Receiving Assignment and Test Alerts
While the full grade book grants a helpful snapshot, families can further leverage Skyward to receive weekly alerts on upcoming due dates. After completing the initial account setup, parents can customize notifications for individual students.
Select alerts around new homework assignments, projects coming due, tests scheduled, and even grades falling below thresholds. These notifications offer parents and students advance notice to align schedules and dedicate after-school time for completion. With hectic student and family schedules, these automated reminders help all members stay on top of the workload.
Monitoring Attendance History
Skyward also enables parents to monitor attendance data including absences, late arrivals, early departures, and excuses entered. Unexpected absences become quickly visible so parents can promptly report legitimate excuses around illness or other conflicts.
Notifications also signal trends in absenteeism which may require intervention to get back on track and avoid truancy violations. Beyond student presence, families can access school calendars displaying important academic dates, performance events, professional development days, parent-teacher conferences and more.
Reading District and School Alerts
The platform also shares essential school bulletins and district announcements. Families receive notifications about weather delays and closures, early dismissals, testing schedules, school pictures, club sign-ups, community events and more through their message feed.
Important updates also display directly on the Skyward home dashboard when logged in. Setting up alerts ensures time-sensitive communiques reach parents so children arrive at school prepared for special programming, assemblies, field trips and high-stakes exams.
Tips for Skyward Success
With this wealth of student data and district communications accessible through Skyward FBISD families are empowered to support education from home. However, effectively navigating the platform’s offerings takes time and practice. Begin by exploring the intuitive tabs and tools available through the parent portal upon login.
Customize notifications surrounding grades, attendance, and school bulletins to align with your priorities. Establish a routine for checking Skyward every week to monitor grades, assignments, and school alerts. Reach out to teachers early on to understand how they are leveraging grade books, announcements, and other functionality.
Troubleshoot any access issues and reset passwords so your account remains active. Soon Skyward will become a reliable resource you can trust for real-time insights into student performance. By fully utilizing Skyward as an FBISD parent, you can foster deeper engagement, communication, and collaboration for student growth both inside and outside the classroom walls.