The Field Manual.

Start here

The one-minute picture of what STRIDE is, where your information lives, and why that matters before you type in a single student.

What STRIDE is

STRIDE is a gradebook and clipboard for PE, built to be used one-handed in a gym. In a normal week you'll take attendance, rate students in a few categories you choose, and now and then run a fitness test or a skills rubric. Everything else in this manual hangs off those three habits.

Your data lives on your devices — nowhere else

STRIDE keeps everything on your own devices — your iPhone, iPad or Mac. There is no STRIDE cloud, no student logins, no account, and nothing leaves your device unless you send it out on purpose (an export, a backup, or sharing between your own devices). That's a deliberate choice: it keeps student information private and lets the app work with zero signal in the middle of a gym.

The five tabs, at a glance

STRIDE has five tabs — along the bottom on iPhone, down the left side on iPad and Mac. They are the whole app; everything else is reached from inside them or from a few icons that are always there.

Two more places are reachable from any tab — at the top right on iPhone, at the bottom of the sidebar on iPad and Mac: Settings ⚙ and the Toolkit ⏱. Both get their own chapters.

On iPhone and iPad there's also a home-screen widget that lives outside the app entirely — today's class, a countdown, and one-tap logging without opening STRIDE at all. See Chapter 12.

First-time setup

The first time you open STRIDE it walks you through a short setup. Here's what each step is asking for and why — so you can answer quickly and change your mind later.

The setup walkthrough

The walkthrough appears automatically on a fresh install. You can skip it and set things up by hand, but going through it once is the fastest way to a working app. It moves through these steps:

1. Welcome. A quick hello. Nothing to enter.
2. Your profile. Your name, email, and school. This is only used to personalize the app and label your exports — none of it is shared anywhere.
3. School calendar. When your year starts and ends, and whether you run semesters, trimesters, or quarters. STRIDE uses this to group your Insights by term and to stay quiet on days off. You can adjust every date later.
4. Your first class. Give it a name, and optionally a start time, length, and which weekdays it meets. Times power the Home screen's "class in session" card; you can skip them and add them later.
5. Rating categories. The qualities you'll score each day — things like Movement, Effort, and Participation. Pick the ones you'll use; you can rename, recolor, add, or remove them anytime.
6. Fitness. A heads-up that the fitness test is ready when you are. Nothing to set up now.
7. Done. You land on Home, ready to add students and start logging.

Re-run setup or take the tour anytime

Two refreshers live in Settings → Data & Backup:

• Take the Tour — a short guided pass that highlights each tab in the live app and explains what it's for.
• Replay Setup Walkthrough — runs the first-time setup again. It won't erase anything you've already entered.

Getting around

A map of the whole interface: the five tabs, and the four icons that follow you everywhere.

The tabs

Tap any of the five tabs to switch views. The one you're on is highlighted. Tapping the tab you're already on does nothing — no jarring reload. Each tab is covered in its own chapter (03 through 08).

The four header icons

Four small icons — at the top right on iPhone, at the bottom of the sidebar on iPad and Mac. They're always there, whatever tab you're in.

Home

Your day at a glance, and the fastest route into whatever class needs logging right now. This is the screen you'll open most.

The greeting and context line

Up top: a greeting, the date and time, and — if you've turned on location — a small weather chip. Below the greeting sits one quiet line of context: a coach's quote, a note about the weather, or a heads-up that today runs an altered schedule. Tap that line to cycle to another one.

The hero card

When a class is in session, it rises to the top as a large "hero" card with a live progress bar showing how far through the period you are. Tap it to jump straight into logging that class.

Between periods — and starting about 30 minutes before your first class — the card switches to COMING UP with a countdown to the next class, so it never sits empty or misleading.

The class grid

Below the hero, every class scheduled for today appears as a smaller card. Each card knows its own status:

• Now — happening at this moment.
• Pending — hasn't met yet today.
• Overdue — the period has passed and it isn't fully logged. These float toward the top so nothing slips.
• Logged — you've finished it for the day.
• Day off — a holiday or the class doesn't meet today; STRIDE won't nag you about it.
• Does not meet today — you switched the class off for the day because it was cancelled.

Tap any card to open that class and start logging. Classes without start times sort by period number, and classes that don't meet today drop to the bottom.

A class that got cancelled: open it and tick Does not meet today in the top corner. Nobody is marked absent, the day isn't counted in the Gradebook, Insights or reports, and its reminder stops. Any marks already entered for that day are cleared — STRIDE asks first. Changed your mind? Untick it, or tap Undo. It works on past days too: go back to the day with the arrows.

Roster

Where you build classes and add students. It's a two-panel view: pick a class, and its students fill the panel beside it. This is your setup home base. On a large screen, a class's overview — attendance and the spread of skill levels — fills the space beside the list; after opening a student, tap the class again to get back to it.

Creating a class

1. Open the Roster tab and tap to add a new class.
2. Give it a name (e.g. "3rd Period PE").
3. Optionally set a start time, a length in minutes, and the weekdays it meets. These power the Home screen's live cards and countdowns.
4. Save. The class appears in the class list; select it to add students.

Each class keeps its own schedule and meeting days. You can edit or delete a class later from the same tab.

Adding students — three ways

1. By hand. Add a student one at a time: first name, last name, and optionally grade, a student ID, sex, age, and a skill level. Good for a handful of late arrivals. Check your district's policy before adding student ID numbers.

2. Paste a list. Copy names out of your gradebook and paste them in. STRIDE reads common layouts — "Last, First" or "First Last," with or without a header row — and figures out the columns.

3. Import a spreadsheet or PDF. Bring in an Excel or CSV file exported from your student information system, or a class list saved as a PDF — STRIDE reads the table, even with no internet. It understands PowerSchool-style exports, recognises columns by what's in them rather than their headings, survives names with commas, and skips report titles and blank rows above the real data. Sex (or gender) and age columns come in too — or age from a birth-date column.

Importing into a class that already has students matches the names you already have instead of adding duplicates, fills in only details that are blank (like a missing student number or age), and lists anyone missing from the file without removing them — so re-importing a roster never costs you any history.

The import review screen

Whichever import method you use, STRIDE shows a review screen before adding anyone. This is your safety net.

• Every student it found appears with a checkbox — uncheck anyone you don't want.
• Obvious junk (page footers, totals, stray dates) is filtered out but still viewable.
• Anything questionable is flagged with a plain reason and left off until you say so.
• It tells you how it's reading each column, so you can catch a mismatch before it happens.

Confirm, and the checked students are added to the selected class.

What each roster row shows

Under each name: the student's sex and age, their skill level if you've set one, then grade and ID. Once most of a class has age and sex filled in, anyone still missing one is flagged can't PFT-score, so you can fix it before test day.

Removing, restoring, and deleting students

Rosters shift, especially early in a term. STRIDE separates two very different actions. To remove a student, open them, tap the pencil to edit, and choose Remove from this class at the bottom. Removed students are listed under Removed students at the bottom of the class, where you can restore them or delete them for good.

• Remove — hides a student but keeps all their attendance and scores. One tap restores them, records intact. A student who transfers out and later comes back is reconnected to their old records instead of starting fresh.
• Permanent delete — erases the student and their data for good. It sits behind a clear warning, because it can't be undone.

Student profiles

Tap any student to open their profile: attendance summary, rating trends over time, fitness results, rubric progress, and recent notes — one student's whole story in one place. Their skill level sits beside their name — tap it to change it. You can also reach any profile instantly with the Search icon at the top. It's the same profile wherever you open it — the Roster, Search, or Full profile in Insights.

Fitness on the profile lists every test the student is on, including one still running, with every event — a dash for one they haven't done yet. A test that started before the term you're viewing still shows while it's running. If a student has the same student number in another class (they changed sections at the semester), their results from that class show too, labelled with its name.

On a Mac or a landscape iPad, the expand button at the top of a profile hides the student list so the profile fills the screen; the back arrow returns to the list.

Archiving classes at the end of a term

In Edit Class, Runs until sets a class's last day: All year (the default), the end of any term on your calendar, or a Custom date. A week before, the bell reminds you — a good moment to send grades to PowerSchool. The day after, the class is archived: it leaves every tab, the bell and reminders, and any running tests end. Nothing is deleted.

Roster › Archived, at the bottom of the class list, shows archived classes. Open one to see its students and their profiles (read-only, and you can still export them), or tap Restore to bring it back running all year. The archive button beside a class's pencil archives it right away. Gradebook › Reports can still print an archived class.

Logging a class

The core daily habit: mark who's here and rate them. Built to be quick — mark the room present in one tap, then flag only the exceptions.

Opening a class

The quickest way in is the Home tab — tap the class that's in session or coming up. You can also open any class from Roster. Once inside, a date control at the top lets you move to another day if you're catching up on a class you missed.

Marking attendance

Each student is a row with four attendance buttons. Tap one to set it; tap it again to clear it.

PTAE

• P — Present. Here and participating.
• T — Tardy. Late. Expand the row to record how many minutes late.
• A — Absent. Not here (unexcused).
• E — Excused. Away with a valid reason — excused days never count against a student.

Mark the whole room at once

Tap All present to mark everyone present in a single tap. Then you only have to change the handful who were late or out. On a normal day this turns attendance into a five-second job.

Rating students

Tap the arrow on a student's row to expand it. There you'll see each rating category you set up, with a sliding bar to score it. Drag or tap to set a value — tapping the fourth pill fills to four, tapping the second drops back to two. Tapping the pill that's already at the top of the fill steps down by one, which is how you tap your way to a 0. Tapping no longer clears a rating back to blank.

Movement 4 out of 5

The expanded row also holds the minutes-late field (for tardies) and a note field for anything worth remembering about that student today. Notes surface later on the student's profile.

"Start ratings at max" — the deduction workflow

Some teachers prefer to start everyone at full marks and deduct for problems, rather than build up from zero. Turn on Start ratings at max in Settings → Scoring, and marking a student present fills every category to the top score automatically — you only subtract. It applies as you mark attendance, so students you've already marked aren't changed.

If you grade this way, note that tapping down through a category now reaches a real 0 — previously tapping did nothing at all with this setting on, and the only way to a zero was a careful drag to the far left.

Insights

Where the daily logging turns into something you can read: trends over time, a weekly grading grid, individual student timelines, and a list of who to follow up with.

The trend chart

Pick a class, and its rating trends appear as one chart with a line per category. Tap a category chip to toggle its line on or off — handy for comparing just Effort and Participation, say. On an iPhone, two menus at the top choose the class (or All classes) and the date range — a term, this week, the last 30 days, the school year or all time (terms come from your school calendar). The chart's scale starts just below your lowest value, so a half-point drop is easy to see; the numbers down the side say where it starts.

Week at a Glance

Flip to WEEK for a grid built for grading: every student down the side, the days of the week across the top, and their scores in the cells. Step back a week at a time to catch up on entry. It's designed to be read the way you'd read a paper gradebook.

How scores read as a grade

Two settings in Settings → Scoring control how the numbers look here and in exports:

• Points display — show the average rating (e.g. 3.4), the total points earned (e.g. 16), or points out of possible (e.g. 16/20).
• Count absences as zero — when on, an unexcused absence counts as 0 for that day. This only changes the math on top; your attendance and ratings themselves never change.
• Excused days count as full points — off by default, which leaves an excused day out of the total entirely. Turn it on and an excused day you didn't rate counts as full credit instead. Either way, a rating you do enter on an excused day is always kept.

One more rule sits underneath all of these: a student who was present or tardy is scoreable, so a category you left blank counts as a 0 (see Chapter 05). Absent, excused and unmarked students stay out of the averages entirely.

Student timelines

Tap any student in Insights to open their timeline — the same profile you reach from Roster or Search, showing how they've trended across the range you're viewing. Links at the top (Summary, Ratings, Skills, Fitness, Notes) jump to each section and stay put while you scroll. Over a range longer than about six weeks the rating trend shows weekly averages, with one category bright — tap another category to bring it forward.

Keep an Eye On

Insights flags students worth a check-in — a run of absences, a downward trend — so nobody quietly slips. This overlaps with the Attention bell at the top of the app, which collects the same kind of nudges across all your classes.

Fitness

Run the Presidential Fitness Test — or your own test battery — for a whole class, with official percentile scoring and a record book of your best performers.

The idea: assign a test, then score the room

Testing in STRIDE works like this: you assign a test to a class for a date, and it stays open across days until you end it — so a battery you spread over a week is still one test. A test reads Scheduled, then Running, then Completed. On iPhone and on an iPad held upright, the Fitness tab shows Trends · Records · Testing · Tests across the top and then one row per class: what it's running (or 2 tests running), a NOW tag on the class in the gym, and otherwise when it was last tested. Tap a row to open it: each running test with Edit, a bar per event and Record, then its scheduled and completed tests and + Assign a test.

1. Open a class row and tap + Assign a test (or New test at the top, which starts on the class in the gym now).
2. The setup sheet lists Class · Test · Date · Repeats, each with its value; tap one to change it. Pick the test — the built-in Presidential battery, or one of your own — and its events show underneath; + Add an event adds one right there. Set it to repeat (weekly, say) and the next round opens on its own.
3. Tap Record, pick an event and go down the roster, entering one result per student.
4. STRIDE scores each result against official standards as you go. When everyone has been recorded, it says so and shows End test. The test stays running until you end it, so late results still have a home, and a repeating test keeps repeating after you end it.

Testing only some events. In the setup sheet a test's events are tick boxes, all ticked to start. Untick any you're not testing this session, say just the Mile from Fall Fitness, and the session counts as finished once the ticked events are done. Unticking hides an event from that session without deleting anything: results already recorded stay saved and come back if you tick it again. A repeating test starts each time with every event again.

Changing a test. Edit on a running test (open its class row), or Setup inside the test, opens the same sheet: change the date (until results are in) or how often it repeats, add an event, or end the test. To stop a repeat, set Repeats to Doesn't repeat. Adding an event to a test that has already finished reopens it so you can record the new event. Open an older test from the Completed dates in its class row and use Setup there.

No doubles. If you name a new test like one you already have, or assign a test a class already has open or has just run, STRIDE says so and offers to open that one instead — one test per class keeps every result in one place.

Recording results — by event, or by student

A gym runs one event at a time: you set up the mile, everyone runs it, you record the mile. STRIDE is built around that, so By event is the default — pick an event and walk the roster, entering one number per student. Tap By student if you'd rather take one student through their whole battery at once, which suits make-ups and stragglers. It's the same round either way; the two are just different ways of walking the same list. As you go, each name shows that student's last result for the event and how far today's is up or down.

The colors compare with their PR. Green is a new personal best. Gold means within 90% of their PR (tying it counts), so a tired in-season day still reads as on track. Red is under 90%. For timed events, 90% means 90% of their best speed: a 1.00 s Flying 10 PR stays gold up to 1.11 s. Change the percentage, or turn gold off, in Settings › Fitness Testing.

Events measured in minutes and seconds — like the mile — are typed on the number pad, and the colon goes in for you: type 7 1 2 and it reads 7:12. To fix a score, tap it and just type the new one: it replaces the old score instead of adding to it.

Boys, girls and the whole class

In a class with both boys and girls, a Whole class · Boys · Girls switch sits under the mode buttons. It narrows the list, the counts, the trend line and the iPad grid to that group; students with no sex set show under Whole class only. Above the list, a summary gives the group's average and best for the event — with the extra measurement, like mph, in large type when the event has one.

Students who didn't take part

A student who sat out gets Didn't participate, which shows on the roster as DNP. This matters because it's genuinely different from a student you simply haven't reached yet: a DNP counts as dealt with, so the test can finish without their score, while a blank keeps it waiting. Use it for injuries, absences on test day, or anyone excused from the event.

The Presidential Fitness Test

The built-in battery covers the classic events, each scored against official percentile standards for the student's age and sex:

• Abdominal — Curl-ups or partial curl-ups
• Agility — Shuttle Run
• Endurance — 1 Mile Run
• Upper body — Pull-ups or right-angle push-ups
• Flexibility — V-sit reach or sit & reach

Because some events have alternates (curl-ups or partial curl-ups), you record whichever version you actually ran.

How results are scored — the award tiers

Each result is placed into a tier based on its percentile, so you can read a class at a glance:

PRESIDENTIAL NATIONAL PARTICIPANT BELOW 50TH

Presidential is the top band, National the next, Participant is completed-but-below-standard, and Below 50th flags a result under the 50th percentile. A result you haven't entered yet reads as Incomplete, and one you've marked DNP reads as that — the two look different on purpose, because only one of them is still waiting on you.

Custom test batteries

Not every program runs the Presidential test. You can build your own battery and assign it exactly like the built-in one. Open Tests on the Fitness tab, then Build a new test or tap one of yours.

Start from the bank. Build a new test (or New in the setup sheet) offers Start blank or a ready-made test: Health-Related Fitness, Cardio, Speed & Agility, Power, Muscular Endurance, Strength Maxes or Athletic Combine. Pick one and the editor opens filled in. Change anything, then Save, and it's your own test. The bank's tests come without numbers on their levels, so add cut-offs that suit your students. Every test, yours included, can carry a short description, shown under its name.

On iPhone and iPad a test is a list of its events. Drag ⋮⋮ to reorder them, tap one to change it, or tap + Add event and start from a quick pick like the Mile, PACER, Push-ups or a Flying 10. Each event has a name, what it's Measured in (reps, seconds, min:sec, inches, centimeters, or feet & inches), whether higher or lower is better (it sets itself for times), and optional levels. Leave the last level's number blank to mean "everyone else", so a student below every number still gets a level.

Extra measurements. Each event can also show a figure worked out from the result — set it under Extra measurement when you create or edit the test: Speed (mph) or Pace per mile for a timed run over a distance you enter (a Flying 10 over 10 yards in 1.27 s reads 16.1 mph), Feet & inches for a jump measured in inches or centimeters (74″ reads 6′ 2″), and Reps per minute for a rep test with a time limit. It appears beside the result everywhere — while entering, in the class list, the student profile, the Record Book and the PDF report. It's for reading only: proficiency levels and "worse than usual" still use the result itself. Adding one to an existing test shows on past results too.

Feet and inches. For a broad jump, say, choose Feet & inches under Measured in (on the Mac: Type results as: Feet & inches), and results are typed in two boxes, 6 and 4, rather than as 76.

Combining two tests

If a class's testing ended up split across two tests — the Mile under "Fall Fitness Testing" and Sit-and-Reach under a second "fall fitness" — open Tests on the Fitness tab. Tests with matching names are flagged with Combine them, and every test has a combine button. Pick the one to keep; a preview shows what will move where. Combine puts every result under the kept test, one entry per student on that test's date, then deletes the other. Where both tests had a result for the same student and event, the kept test's result stays — the preview lists those first. Save a backup before you combine, and if you use STRIDE on two devices, let both catch up first and combine on one.

The Record Book

STRIDE keeps a Record Book of your top performers by event — the class or program bests, updated as you enter results. A student who sets a personal best is flagged when you record it.

Assessment

Skills rubrics: define what "good" looks like for a unit, then score your whole roster against it at once. Think dribbling, overhand serve, or a gymnastics routine — anything you assess by level rather than by number.

Building a rubric

A rubric is a template you create once and reuse. Building one means:

1. Name it for the unit or skill (e.g. "Volleyball — Overhand Serve").
2. Add your criteria — the specific things you're watching for.
3. Choose how many levels it uses. The level names ("Emerging," "Developing," "Proficient," and so on) come from your Skills Scale in Settings, shared across all rubrics; each rubric can use the first few of them.

On iPhone and iPad, tap Rubrics at the top of the Assessment tab, then a rubric to open it, or Build a new rubric — which offers Start blank or a ready-made rubric from the bank (Overhand Throw, Catching, basketball, volleyball and soccer skills, Forehand Strike, Jump Rope, Sportsmanship & Effort) to change as you like. A rubric can have a short description too. Its criteria are a list: type straight into a line, drag ⋮⋮ to reorder, or tap + Add criterion. The short name for class tiles and Delete this rubric are under More. Deleting a rubric keeps the scores already given.

Assigning and scoring

Assessment works just like Fitness. On iPhone and on an iPad held upright, the tab shows one row per class: the assessment it's running (or 2 assessments running), a NOW tag on the class in the gym, and when it was last assessed. Tap a row to open it: each running assessment with Edit, a bar per criterion showing how many students are scored, and Score, then the completed ones and + Assign a rubric.

1. Tap New assessment (it starts on the class in the gym now) or + Assign a rubric in a class's row.
2. The setup sheet lists Class · Rubric · Date · Repeats; tap one to change it. The rubric's criteria show underneath. Set it to repeat and the next one opens on its own.
3. Tap Score and go through the roster — each student, each criterion, tap the level.
4. When everyone is scored, STRIDE says so and shows End assessment. It stays running until you end it, so a late student can still be scored. A repeating assessment keeps repeating after you end it.

Changing an assessment. Edit in its row, or Setup inside it, opens the same sheet: the date (until anyone is scored), how often it repeats, or end it. The same limit of 4 running tests per class applies.

Progress over time

Each assessment saves a progress timeline per student, so repeating a rubric later in the unit shows growth on that student's profile. Rubric results sit alongside their attendance, ratings, and fitness in one profile.

The Skills Scale

The named levels every rubric draws from live in Settings → Scoring → Skills Scale. Rename them, add levels, or remove them (minimum two). Change them here and every rubric updates to match.

Toolkit

A drawer of gym-floor helpers — timers, team makers, a scoreboard, random pickers — reachable from the timer icon at the top of any screen.

Opening it and pinning favorites

Tap the ⏱ Toolkit icon in the header to open the drawer. Inside, tap LIBRARY to browse everything and pin the tools you actually use — your pinned tools show first, so your interval timer is one tap away instead of buried.

The tools

Team Builder has a Balance by skill level toggle. Left off, it splits the present students at random, as it always has. Turned on, it deals them out by the skill level on each student's record — strongest first, alternating direction each pass — so the high-skill players end up spread across the teams instead of landing together. Students with no level set are treated as middle of the road, and if nobody present has a level, it tells you rather than pretending the split was balanced.

Settings

Everything you can shape to fit your program. Reach it from the ⚙ gear at the top of any tab. Changes save automatically — there's no "apply" button.

Your Profile

Your name, email, and school. Used to personalize the app and label exports; never shared.

Appearance

Theme picks Light, Dark or System, which follows your device as it switches between light and dark. It's set on each device separately, so the iPad and the Mac can differ. Set the accent color — the highlight used throughout the app. The lime default is STRIDE's signature, but it's yours to change. Names in lists shows students as First Last or Last, First in every list. Test complete picks what plays when a test finishes: Confetti or the Ring.

Location & Weather

Allow location to show the weather chip on Home, or search a location by name. Entirely optional — and Use my location keeps only your general area, never your exact spot.

School Calendar

The backbone of your year. It only groups your data — nothing here ever hides or deletes what you've logged.

• Year starts / ends — the boundaries of your school year.
• Term system — none, semesters, trimesters, or quarters. Picking one splits the year into evenly-dated terms, which you then adjust to match your district calendar. Terms drive the range options in Insights.
• Days off — holidays, breaks, snow days. Add a label and a date range, and STRIDE won't flag classes as overdue on those days.
• Schedules — for Fridays, assemblies, testing days, and delays (see below).

Starting a new school year

The day after your school year's last day, Home shows a card: 2025–26 ended Jun 5 · Set up. Until you set up the new year, reminders and repeating tests are paused. The setup sheet asks for the new first and last day and your term system, and offers to:

• Empty the rosters — everyone moves to Removed students with all their history, ready for this year's class lists. If you've already logged classes since the old year ended, it suggests keeping your students instead.
• End last year's open tests — their results are kept.
• Save a backup first.

Your classes, tests and rubrics carry over. Holidays and schedules for the new year can be added here in School Calendar afterwards.

Altered-day schedules

Regular is your classes' normal times. When a day runs differently — a Friday bell schedule, an assembly, a two-hour delay — add a schedule that changes only what's different. A new schedule starts as a copy of Regular, so you edit the few times that changed rather than rebuilding from scratch.

• Make it recurring (every Friday) or apply it to specific dates.
• It applies to every class at once, and classes that don't meet on an altered day switch off — so nothing nags you about a class that never happened.
• A picker on the Home screen handles the assembly announced at 7 a.m. — flip to the altered schedule for the day without touching your Regular times.

Scoring

The busiest settings section. It holds:

• Rating scale — the top of your scale (a preset of 3, 4, 5, or 10, or any custom value). This is the "out of" for every category.
• Convert existing ratings — if you switch scales mid-term, this button re-scales your old ratings proportionally. It asks for confirmation and saves an automatic safety copy first.
• Start ratings at max — the deduct-from-full workflow described in Chapter 05.
• Points display — average, total, or out-of-possible.
• Count absences as zero — whether an unexcused absence scores a 0.
• Excused days count as full points — whether an excused day counts as full credit instead of being left out of the total.
• Points on absent or excused days — Find, then Clear, removes points left on an absent or excused day (from marking a student present first). They don't count either way.
• Tracked categories — rename, recolor, reorder, add, remove, or switch off the qualities you rate. Turn off what you don't use, or invent your own.

Marking a student Absent or Excused clears that day's points, whichever you tapped first, so an excused day is left out (or counts as full points, if that's on) no matter what.

Assessment

Skills scale — the named levels every rubric uses (Chapter 08). Rename, add or remove levels; a rubric can use the first few.

Fitness Testing

• Gold for on-track results — green for a PR, gold within a set percentage of it, red below. The Gold within number starts at 90%. Turn it off to go back to green or red against their last result.
• Watch list — how far below their average of their last three a result must be before it's listed as worse than usual (5% to start). This is for spotting a sudden dip, and it stays separate from the colors athletes see.

Notifications

Optional reminders on your iPhone or iPad, all off until you turn them on. None of them fire for a class you've already logged. The three tied to the school day — class not logged, end-of-day, and weekly grades — shift with an altered schedule, so on an early-release day they arrive after the real last bell rather than the usual one. The follow-ups arrive the next morning instead. Choose any of:

• Class not logged — a nudge shortly after a class ends with students still unlogged.
• End-of-day reminder — one reminder at a time you pick, if any class is still unlogged.
• Weekly grades — a reminder to review Week at a Glance, on the day and at the time you pick.
• Term ending — a heads-up the week grades are due.
• Testing round stalling — a nudge when a test has been left open a few days with students still unscored.
• Unlogged class follow-up — a second reminder when a class is still showing no attendance a couple of days later.

If you'd previously turned notifications off for STRIDE in your device's settings, the section tells you how to turn them back on there.

Privacy — Face ID / Touch ID

On iPhone and iPad, turn on app lock to require Face ID or Touch ID whenever you leave and return to STRIDE. Sensible on a device that lives on a gym cart. On a Mac, STRIDE is protected by your Mac login.

Data & Backup

Covered in full in the next chapter — this is where Demo Mode, the tour, backups, restore, and reset live.

Send feedback

At the very bottom of Settings, Send feedback opens an email to us with your STRIDE version filled in. Please describe what you saw in words — don't attach screenshots showing real students' names.

Backups & good habits

The short chapter that protects everything in all the others. All of this lives in Settings → Data & Backup.

Back up your data

Because STRIDE lives only on your own devices, backups are your seatbelt. Export Backup saves a single file with all your data — classes, students, attendance, ratings, fitness, rubrics, settings. Keep it somewhere safe (email it to yourself, drop it in cloud storage). Restore from Backup brings it all back on a new device or after a reinstall.

Merge from backup

Restore replaces everything with the backup — right when a device dies. Merge from backup combines a backup from another device with what's already here instead: for each item the newer version wins, and a class logged on one device and rated on another keeps both. You see a count of what will change before anything does. A merge can't be undone, so export a backup of this device first.

Demo Mode

Demo Mode fills the app with realistic sample data so you can explore or show someone how STRIDE works — without touching your real data. A DEMO badge appears at the top of the screen while it's on. Turn it off and your real data is exactly as you left it.

Reset all data

The last button in Data & Backup wipes everything and starts fresh. It sits behind a warning and can't be undone — so make a backup first if there's any chance you'll want the data back.

A sensible rhythm

• Daily: take attendance and rate from Home. It saves itself.
• Weekly: catch up any gaps in Week at a Glance; export it for your gradebook.
• Every few weeks: export a fresh backup.
• Per unit: run a fitness test or a rubric when it fits your plan.
• Once, up front: set your calendar, categories, and scale — then mostly leave them alone.

The home-screen widget

Today's teaching, on your iPhone or iPad home screen, without opening the app. Add it once and it keeps itself current.

Adding it

Press and hold an empty part of your iPhone's home screen until the icons jiggle, tap the + in the corner, search for STRIDE, swipe to the size you want, and tap Add Widget. You can add more than one size if you like. STRIDE offers three home-screen sizes; there's no lock-screen widget.

• Small — the one class that matters right now, and nothing else.
• Medium — that, plus the day's counts, the weather, and two quick buttons.
• Large — all of the above, plus your full list of classes for the day and a third button.

What it shows through the day

The widget changes with the school day rather than showing one fixed thing:

• Before the first bell — UP FIRST, your opening class, when it starts, and how many students are in it.
• Between classes — COMING UP, the next class, and a live countdown to it. If you logged the class that just finished, it confirms that here, so you don't have to wonder.
• During a class — NOW, the class you're in, the time it ends, and a bar that drains as the period runs down.
• Once everything is logged — All classes logged ✓. This appears the moment the last roll is taken, not at the end of the school day, so finishing early is acknowledged when you finish.
• On a day with no classes — Enjoy the day, with the next school day's first bell underneath.

Each class line carries its period label exactly as you typed it in the class setup — "Period 8", "Block A", "Advisory".

The counts and the buttons

The medium and large sizes show how the day is going: how many classes you've logged and how many are still to go, today's present / tardy / absent tally, and the temperature with a plain read on whether it's a day to be outside.

The buttons go straight where you'd want to go, skipping the app's home screen:

• Attendance — opens the class you're in, or the one coming up, ready to mark. This button lights up during a class and just before one, which is exactly when you want it.
• Week — opens Week at a Glance.
• Toolkit — opens the timers and team tools. Large size only.
• Tapping anywhere else on the widget opens STRIDE at Home.

Keeping it current

The widget doesn't read your data live — it reads a snapshot the app leaves for it. STRIDE saves a fresh one whenever you open or return to the app, whenever you save attendance, and whenever you change a class, your roster, or your calendar. iOS then decides when to actually redraw the widget, which is usually within a few minutes rather than instantly.

Good to know

The widget uses whatever accent color you've chosen in Settings, so it matches the app. Demo Mode never reaches it — while you're browsing sample data, the widget keeps showing your real classes, so you can explore without your home screen filling up with invented students.

Gradebook (iPad & Mac)

Turn an iPad sideways (or use the Mac) and a sixth tab appears: Gradebook — sit-down tools for grading and reporting, at the top of the screen as Gradebook and Reports. The Testing view lives under Fitness › Testing.

The grid

Students down the side, the days your class met across the top. Choose what the cells show — Attendance, one category, All points, or By category — then Day or Week, and whether figures read as an Avg, Points, or Out of. The last column is the student's total for the whole range; tap its heading to sort by it. The class average sits along the bottom.

Entering scores: on Attendance or a single category, by Day, tap a cell and then a button below the grid — a score, or P / T / A / E. The next student is selected, so a column goes in one tap per student; Clear empties a cell. With a keyboard attached, just type.

Dates: the range menu has Recent 20 meetings, this or last week or month, each term — and Custom dates…, which shows From and To boxes so you can grade any stretch you like.

Notes: a small purple dot marks a cell whose day has a note. Select a cell and the bar under the grid shows that student's note for that day — tap it (or press N on a keyboard) and type to add or change it. It's the same note you see when logging the class. On a Week or By category view the bar lists the notes for those days instead.

Colours: full marks read normally. Anything below full is tinted by how far short it is — pale amber at 90% or more, then amber, orange, and red under 70% — so a missing point shows at a glance.

Into your district gradebook

Copy column (or Copy + names) puts the selected column on the clipboard in on-screen order, ready to paste. PowerSchool CSV saves a score-import file for PowerTeacher Pro — it needs each student's Student Number, and the Gradebook tells you who's missing one. If nobody in the class has one, it offers Add numbers (from a roster export) instead of making a file PowerSchool can't use. In PowerTeacher Pro's Import Scores, leave Include First Row unticked — the file has a heading row.

Any day, from any view: click (or double-click) a cell to open that student's day — attendance, each category's score and the note — and change it. A week column asks which day first.

Reports

Pick classes and a date range, then Progress reports (PDF) makes every student's report in one file, one student per page — ready to print or send from the share sheet. One CSV puts the same numbers in a spreadsheet. A long run can be stopped with the ✕ beside the progress bar.