To start another school year, review your family's school-year dates and each student's grade from Home on the HomeTrail website. You can keep your existing family account, students, recurring activities, and earlier learning records. These settings are included with HomeTrail Free.
Change a student's grade from Home
- Open Home.
- In Your family rhythm, select the student. Their details open.
- Choose the new Grade.
- Select Update grade.
- Confirm the change.
The same steps work in a phone browser. The grade change has its own confirmation; Save student saves the other profile details.
Review Attendance criteria, Loves, Working on, and Notes for the new year, then select Save student if you change them.
Set the school-year dates separately
- In Your family rhythm, find This year and select School year.
- Choose your current school status.
- Choose Set start and end dates, then enter First day and Last day, or choose We learn year-round.
- Select Save school year.
Changing these dates does not change student grades. See Set School-Year Dates and Attendance Goals for all the choices.
What happens to attendance and existing activities?
- Attendance progress on Home counts days recorded for the student's current grade. A grade with no recorded attendance starts at zero; changing the grade does not erase the previous grade's days.
- Attendance days, sessions, and nature time you already recorded keep the grade they were logged under. Earlier reports and portfolios still show the year they cover.
- Recurring activities stay saved. Review their students, weekdays, and any start or end dates from Your family rhythm so they fit the new year.
- If the student is staying in the same grade, changing school-year dates does not clear that grade's attendance total. Use a report with a chosen date range when you need to see one year's records separately.
Look back at last year
- Open Home → Records & progress → Reports.
- Open a saved report, or select Generate report.
- For a Year-end report, choose the student and the previous Grade.
- For a specific school-year date range, choose Progress report, then Choose dates and enter the start and end dates.
You can also browse earlier activities in Journey. A saved report is a snapshot; generate it again if you have added or corrected records since it was made. See Generate and Use Reports.
Backdate a grade change instead
Use Trailhead when the change should have taken effect earlier — for example, you are catching up in November on a change that belongs to August.
- Open Trailhead on the HomeTrail website and find Student Details.
- Change the student's Grade.
- A Graduating to a new grade! notice appears. Set the Effective Date.
- Select Save.
Sessions, attendance, and nature time dated on or after that effective date move to the new grade. Anything earlier stays with the previous grade. If a report or portfolio you already generated covers dates after the effective date, HomeTrail tells you which ones may now show outdated grade information so you can re-run them.
