I have a students that are given group assignments. If I create an "assignments completed" table,I could place a portal in a layout where I would find each student's record, and create a record in the assignments completed table. For data entry, I would have to move from student to student to enter that "assignment so-and-so" was completed and the grade earned.

I would like to have an "assignments given" table, where I would create a new record for each assignment, then create a layout based on

"assignments given" with a portal from "assignments completed" but also linked to "students".

When I have a stack of turned-in assignments, I would do a find of the record representing that assignment, then, in the portal, list the names of the students and the grade.

Can this be done? Is there a better way to facilitate data entry? How?

I'm not sure if the assignment tables you are describing are multiple occurences of the same base table, in the relationship graph, or whether they represent new base tables for storing separate records. The latter would seem to be overkill. You could simply put a 'status' field in the assignment table to indicate whether they were completed or not. You could then use this status as a criterion for indicating whether a table should show up on certain layouts or portals.