Overview
Teachers can combine NoRedInk's assignments in a variety of ways to meet different learning objectives, but if you're looking for some inspiration and guidance, this is a great place to start! In this article, you'll find:
- Instructions for how to build a unit for skills practice and mastery that connects NoRedInk's pre-assessment, practice, and growth assessment activities.
- Ready-made writing unit and lesson plans that illustrate some of the most high-leverage ways to sequence NoRedInk's applied writing assignments and printable resources.
How to Build a Unit for Skills Practice and Mastery
NoRedInk's grammar and writing skills unit cycle empowers you to make make efficient, data-driven decisions that supports student learning and guides your teaching instruction.
You’ll choose the topics and pathways you want students to learn and build your units using the following activities: Planning Diagnostic (once), Unit Diagnostics, Practice, and Growth Quiz.
Assign a Planning Diagnostic (Optional)
About this assignment and how to assign it
About Planning Diagnostics
If you're not sure which skills topics you'd like student to work on, a Planning Diagnostic is a great place to start. Planning Diagnostics are adaptive assessments that gather broad-strokes data about your students' strengths and weaknesses so that you can make a long term plan.
How to assign a Planning Diagnostic
- Click here to use one of our pre-made Planning Diagnostics.
- Click here to create your own Planning Diagnostic from the Browse & Assign page.
Note: Planning Diagnostics can only be created with grammar topics. If you want to create a unit for mastering writing skills using practice topics, you can start with a Unit Diagnostic (see step 1).
How to view results before starting a unit
How to find Planning Diagnostic results
From your Assignments page, you can click on the graph icon next to the Planning Diagnostic to view the results. You can also click on the assignment's name from your Student Data gradebook to view results.- Click here to learn more about how to review your Planning Diagnostics results
Tips for using Planning Diagnostic results
- At the end of a Planning Diagnostic, students are grouped into performance bands, rather than a percentage grade. You can quickly reference students’ performance levels when creating new assignments within a unit (learn more here). In your Student Data gradebook, a finished Planning Diagnostic will appear as 100% for completion.
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After you review the results data and decide which pathway you would like to teach, you can click "Start Unit" to give students a Unit Diagnostic that assesses for topics within that pathway.
Step 1. Assign a Unit Diagnostic
About this assignment and how to assign it
About Unit Diagnostics
Unit Diagnostics are targeted pre-assessments intended to give you a sense of what students know at the start of a unit. They are structured like a quiz, such that you can select specific skills to assess and students will receive a percentage grade upon completion.
Based on the results of your Unit Diagnostic, you'll assign targeted Practice to your students to help them focus on which skills they should improve.
At the end of a unit, you'll create a Growth Quiz to compare to your Unit Diagnostic, and our engine will show you how students grew.
How to assign a Unit Diagnostic
đź’ˇ When creating a Unit Diagnostic, you can select from topics under grammar or writing. You can also combine grammar and writing topics in the same Unit Diagnostic.
If you've previously assigned a Planning Diagnostic, you can generate a Unit Diagnostic from the assignment's results page by clicking the "Start unit" button next to the pathway you want students to work on.
- In the assignment creation form, you can still add or remove topics before assigning it! To do this, click the "Edit" button.
- Click here to create your own Unit Diagnostic from the Browse & Assign page.
How to view results before assigning targeted practice
How to find Unit Diagnostic results
- From your Assignments page, you can click on the graph icon next to the Unit Diagnostic to view the results. You can also click on the assignment's name from your Student Data gradebook to view results.
Tips for using Unit Diagnostic results
- Use this baseline assessment to determine what specific skills (topics) you’ll want to focus on for the rest of the unit.
- Use results to inform how you pre-teach skills before assigning practice in NoRedInk. Explore topics, lessons, and interactive tutorials in the Browse & Assign page and give students a live lesson in class using sample questions.
- Use the proficiency bands to determine which students you can group together for practice based on their strengths and weaknesses.
Step 2. Assign Practice(s)
About this assignment and how to assign it
About Practice
Based on the results of your Unit Diagnostic, you can start creating practice activities in the unit so that students can practice and master specific skills.
Rather than assigning a specific number of questions, you’ll assign a set of skills (topics) to work on; students of different levels may require more or fewer questions to prove mastery. We recommend assigning skills in meaningful chunks that build off one another.
How to assign Practice (within a unit):
Once you have a Unit Diagnostic, a “Create Unit” button will appear next to it on your Assignments page. Use this button to add a new Practice assignment to your unit.
The next time you want to add another Practice assignment in the same unit, this button will say "continue unit."
How to view results to determine what to assign next
How to find Practice results
- From your Assignments page, you can click on the graph icon next to the Practice assignment to view the results. You can also click on the assignment's name from your Student Data gradebook to view results.
- Click here to learn more about Practice results.
You can add on more practice activities as your students progress, using their diagnostic and practice performance data to determine what to assign next.
Tips for using Practice results
- Track student progress through practice assignments and use results to inform flexible groups, additional instruction, and pre-teaching of concepts.
- When assigning a new practice assignment as part of a unit, you'll be able to reference students' current levels of performance for the practice topics, enabling you to easily adjust assignments. For example, you can remove topics or group together students based on performance and create specific assignments to challenge them at their current levels.
Step 3. Assign a Growth Quiz
About this assignment and how to assign it
About Growth Quizzes
To assess students’ learning during or at the end of a unit cycle, you'll assign students a Growth Quiz. The results data of a Growth Quiz will let you see students’ growth data compared to previous assessments in the unit.
How to assign a Growth Quiz
- Click the "Continue unit" button that appears on your Assignments page next to the latest assignment in the unit.
How to review results and celebrate growth
How to find Growth Quiz results
- From your Assignments page, you can click on the graph icon next to the Growth Quiz to view the results. You can also click on the assignment's name from your Student Data gradebook to view results.
- Click here to learn more about interpreting growth data.
Tips for using Growth Quiz results
- Compare Growth Quiz results with the original Unit Diagnostic and other Quizzes within the unit to view students’ progress and growth at a glance.
- Determine which students are still struggling and hone in on the challenging topics. Provide additional instruction and support for students.
- Share results with the class, using option to hide names. Celebrate your students' accomplishments!
Step 4. Repeat steps 1-3 to build another unit!
You can refer back to the results of your original Planning Diagnostic and build a new unit using another pathway's topics.
đź’ˇAdditional tips:
- Click here to see an example of a 6 week unit plan that includes an initial Planning Diagnostic and transitions into a complete unit.
- In addition to Practice and Assessment activities, don't forget to incorporate NoRedInk's applied Writing activities in your writing instruction! For example, a Quick Write is a lightweight exercise that you can assign to get students writing more and applying the skills they are practicing. You'll find even more examples of how to combine skills focus practice and applied writing in the next section.
Ready-made Writing Units and Lesson Plans
To build more cohesive writing units, you can combine the grammar and writing skills practice activities with NoRedInk's applied writing activities: Guided Drafts (shown below), Self Reviews, Peer Reviews, and Quick Writes.
NoRedInk's Guided Draft writing activity
To get started with writing units, check out this article to find a list of our pre-made units and lesson plans. Simply click on any assignment to review, customize, and assign it to your students. You can adapt any plan to meet your and your students' needs, or simply use them for inspiration as you create your own writing units.
đź’ˇ Click here to download a PDF with all our ready-made writing units