Overview
This diagram can help you get a sense of how we'd recommend using the assignment types below throughout your school year:
Diagnostics
- Planning Diagnostic - Planning Diagnostics give a broad overview of how students are performing. We’d recommend giving a four- to eight-category Planning Diagnostic at the beginning of every school year or semester to get a general sense of strengths and weaknesses. Note that Planning Diagnostics do not produce a percentage grade; rather, they’ll group students into one of four performance bands.
- Unit Diagnostic - Unit Diagnostics allow for a more zoomed-in view of how students are doing on specific skills. A Unit Diagnostic can be given before the start of a teaching cycle to get a sense of what students already know and to figure out what areas might be challenging for students. Note that Unit Diagnostics are intended to be compared later to a Growth Quiz.
Practice
- Practice - Practice allows students to master skills at their own pace. Rather than assigning a specific number of questions, you’ll assign a set of skills to work on; students of different levels may require more or fewer questions to prove mastery. Generally, a single skill takes 5-10 minutes to complete. Note that students can practice on their own, too! Click here for information about how students can practice any topic on their own.
Quizzes
Unlike Practice, a Quiz assignment gives students a set number of questions to answer and a score based on the number answered correctly. At the completion of a quiz, students are prompted to review incorrect answers and make corrections. This will NOT affect students' scores. Quiz corrections are optional and up to students to complete. Teachers can see student corrections along with scores by clicking the "Results" (graph) icon for any quiz.
- New Quiz - New quizzes allow teachers to assess students on a specific skill or set of skills.
- Growth Quiz - Growth Quizzes are created to match previous Quizzes or Unit Diagnostics, assessing the same concepts but using different questions. They are intended to give teachers a sense of students’ growth over time. These types of quizzes can be thought of as a summative assessment at the end of a learning cycle.
One thing you might consider could be creating a unit that includes a Unit Diagnostic, Practice, and a Growth Quiz based on the same material. This article provides more information on how to create a unit.