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Glossary

The words the panels and the sheets use without explaining them. Where a term has a precise meaning in the code, this is that meaning.

Assessment

Facility (index)
For one question, the mean mark across the scripts divided by the question's maximum, so a number from 0 to 1. A facility of 0.35 means the class scored 35% of the available marks on it. Low facility is the reteach signal; Marks sorts its question table by it and tags the lowest ones that fall below the paper as a whole. Blank or non-numeric cells are left out of the mean.
Discrimination
For one question, how well it separates the stronger scripts from the weaker ones: scripts are ranked by total mark, and the question's mean in the top third minus its mean in the bottom third is divided by its maximum. Near 1 means the strongest scripts got it and the weakest did not; near 0 means everyone did about the same (too easy, too hard, or luck); negative means the weaker scripts did better, which usually means a flawed question or a mark-scheme slip.
MAX row
In a marks file, the row that holds the maximum mark for each question. It is found by the word MAX in any cell and never counted as a script. See Marks files.
Incomplete scripts
Scripts (rows) with at least one blank or non-numeric cell in a question column. The cell counts as 0 in the script's total and grade, is left out of facility and discrimination, and the distribution table gets a last row saying how many scripts were affected. The chart leaves that row out.
Boundary, preset
A grade and the minimum needed for it, as a percentage of the paper or as raw marks (Boundaries in). A preset is a saved table of boundaries; the built-in ones are starting points, not the published figures.
Identifier column
A column whose header names a pupil or a group (Name, Candidate Number, Class…). Dropped on load by every tool, with no way to turn that off. The full word list, and what it does not catch, is in Privacy.

Sheets

Seed
The whole number that fixes every random choice a generator makes. The same seed with the same settings produces the same sheet, so the seed is printed on the sheet and put in its file name (_s42). Change it for a different set; keep it to reprint a lost one.
Key
The answer version of a sheet. It is written as a separate file with _key added to the name, so it cannot be printed by accident with the pupil copy. See Outputs.
House style
The one look every sheet shares: your header and footer text, the title, topic and date, numbered questions, monospace code. Set in Settings; see House style.
Parsons problem
A working program cut into blocks and shuffled; pupils put the blocks back in order (and, with Show indentation off, decide the indents). The key is the original program.
Distractor
A block that does not belong: a real line with its colon removed, a comparison flipped or a loop bound or index off by one. In Quiz, a wrong option in a multiple-choice question.
Trace table
One row per executed line of a program, showing every chosen variable's value after that line ran and anything it printed. The blank table has the line numbers and empty cells; the key is filled in. A Scope column appears only when a function was called, and says which function each row is inside.
Variant (Bugs)
A copy of the input program with exactly one line changed to introduce one error. Each is run, so the key can say crashes (a SyntaxError means it will not start), runs but the output is wrong, hangs or silent (no visible change; skipped unless Silent bugs allowed keeps it). Written as <stem>_bug1.py, _bug2.py, …
Faded (worked) example
A complete solution shown several times with progressively more lines blanked out, so pupils fill in more each time. Fade produces K versions, blanking from the bottom up by default; the key is the full solution.
Stem
The part of a file name before its extension (program for program.py). Outputs are named from it.

Pseudocode

ERL (OCR Exam Reference Language)
The pseudocode OCR uses in J277 exam papers. Pseudocode translates between it, AQA's pseudocode and Python for the GCSE subset and lists anything it could not translate instead of dropping it.
AQA pseudocode
AQA's equivalent for 8525: ← for assignment, OUTPUT, USERINPUT, ENDWHILE and the rest.
GCSE subset
The part of Python both boards expect: variables, arithmetic, comparisons, if, counted and conditional loops, functions, lists, strings, casts, random, basic file methods. Outside it, Pseudocode keeps the line as a comment and names it in the could-not-translate list.

Quiz

Question bank
A Markdown file with one ## heading per question. Format in Question banks.
Spec point / tag
A label on a question such as ocr:1.2.4 or aqa:3.3.2 (a point in the exam board's specification) or topic:binary. Topic tags drive filters and retrieval; staff quiz spec ocr lists the spec points.
Do-now
A short printable starter for the first minutes of a lesson: a few questions from the bank in the house style, with the answers in a separate key.
Taught log
A CSV of date,topic: when each topic was taught. Nothing else goes in it.
Retrieval windows
The three dates quiz looks back to when questions come from Taught 1, 3 and 6 weeks ago (staff quiz retrieval): one, three and six weeks before the As of date (today when empty), each with three days' leeway either side. Topics taught inside a window are eligible, and the questions are drawn round-robin across the windows so each gets a fair share. The run log says what fell in each.

The app

Tool
One panel in the sidebar and one staff subcommand over the same code. Tools are listed in groups that follow a teacher's week (Lessons, Sheets & quizzes, From a program, After a test), and ⌘1–⌘9 follow that order top to bottom.
Resources folder
The folder of teaching resources the Resource Library indexes. Read-only to every tool: nothing in it is ever changed, and a tool given a file from it writes its outputs elsewhere.
Exclusion list, name only
Two Resource Library guards. The exclusion list names folders under the resources folder that are neither indexed nor listed. Name only marks a file whose text looked like pupil details, so only its name went into the index. Both in Privacy.
Indexed, shown
The two library file counts. Indexed is every file under the resources folder that the exclusion list allows, hidden cruft included; shown is indexed minus hidden, the size of the tree with Hidden off. One tally feeds every place a count appears (Using the launcher).
Cloud placeholder
A file that a cloud service lists on this Mac but has not downloaded. The library marks it and moves on.
Sessions folder
Where Classroom keeps lesson copies (~/TeachingSessions by default) and, under outputs/, where tools write when there is no input file, the code was pasted, or the input is in the resources folder. Local, never auto-detected from a cloud folder.
Lesson label
The one short line (60 characters at most) Classroom asks for when it opens a resource for class, such as P3 Y9 loops. It names the session folder. A lesson, not a class or a pupil.
Promote
Copy a lesson copy's edits back beside the original as a new versioned file (loops_v2.py, then _v3). The original is never overwritten.
Output folder
Where a tool writes. The rule, and every tool's file names, are in Outputs.
Exam board
OCR J277 or AQA 8525, set in Settings › Worksheets (staff worksheet make --board overrides it for one run). Chooses the grade preset the Marks panel starts with and the gates a GCSE truth-table worksheet may use (OCR: AND, OR, NOT; AQA adds XOR). Quiz spec tags are per question (ocr: and aqa: can both be on one), so they do not depend on it.
Level (Worksheet)
GCSE or A level (gcse / a_level), for truth tables. GCSE follows the board; A-level adds XOR at every difficulty and NAND / NOR at hard, and puts alevel in the file name so the GCSE sheet with the same seed survives.
Boolean laws (Worksheet)
The family of laws a simplification set practises: Absorption (absorption: absorption, distributive, complement; the default), Absorption + De Morgan (de_morgan), Identities (identities: identity, idempotent, double negation, complement; the only family that puts X AND X, NOT NOT X or 0 / 1 on the sheet) or All laws (all). The key undoes the question one law at a time, each step in the question's own letters.
Thonny
The Python editor on most school machines. Classroom opens copies in it by default; IDLE, the system default or any command with {file} in it can be set instead.
Run bar
The foot of a tool's inputs column: the Run button (⌘↵) and the folder the tool will write to.
Result strip
The line along the top of a tool's results: a tick or a cross, what the run made ("10 questions · seed 42") or why it stopped, one button per file written (click opens it in its app, right-click shows it in Finder), a Folder button and any warnings ("3 warnings ▸"). Before the first run it offers Open output folder.
Details
The one-line footer under a tool's results that opens that run's log.