Grading on a curve refers to a variety of grading methods teachers use to adjust the scores of students. Typically, grading on a curve increases the student’s grade by moving it up a few points. The curve refers to a bell curve, a term used in statistics. It explains the normal distribution of data. In the classroom, the bell curve refers to the scores the teacher expects to see. On a typical assignment, the majority of the class will receive Cs. Another section of students will receive Bs and Ds. Finally, you will have the students on either extreme who receive As and Fs. When scores are plotted and connected with a line, it forms a curve. This image shows a simple bell curve: There are two common methods of adjusting scores when grading on a curve. Teachers can: - Add the same number of points to each student’s score. If the majority of a class missed four questions on a test, a teacher may decide to add the points from those questions to every student’s score. - Move one student to 100%. If no one in the class received a perfect score, a teacher may decide to move the closest student's score to 100%. Then, they will add the same number of percentage points to each student’s grade, raising them all by the same amount. Since this gradebook is designed to be printed and used to manually record scores, the simplest way to use it when you grade on a curve is to adjust the scores of your students prior to recording data. Then, you won’t have to try to change them once you’ve begun entering them. Conversely, you can add an additional column for each assignment. Then you would record the original scores in one column and the adjusted scores in the next. However, this can make it more difficult when calculating the final grade, as you would have to delete the original scores from your calculations.