What are NoRedInk Planning Diagnostics?
Planning Diagnostics are adaptive assessments that gather broad-stroke data about your students' strengths and weaknesses. Planning Diagnostics can be used at the beginning of each school year or semester to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses. You can use this information to determine what skills your curriculum should emphasize!
Assign a Planning Diagnostic
Whether you're new to NoRedInk or returning for a new semester, you can choose from any of our pre-made diagnostics, which are aligned to state standards or national tests, or create a custom one by selecting the skills you’d like to assess.
Ready to assign? Check out this article to learn how to create a Planning Diagnostic!
Student experience
Students progress through a series of questions to assess their skill level on the assigned topics, and questions will adapt in difficulty based on students' previous answers. These questions will come in a variety of types (multiple choice, drag-and-drop, etc.), and students can skip any questions if they are feeling stuck as they progress through the assessment.
Curious to learn more? Check out this article to see the student experience of a Planning Diagnostic!
View Planning Diagnostic results
Once students are finished, they are given a completion score of 100 for finishing the assignment by the due date. You will be able to view an overall breakdown of student performance for each skill area (Pathway) included in the assessment.
From these results, you can determine which skill Pathway to begin the year with your students. You can find out more in our article on how to view your Planning Diagnostic results!
Best practices and tips
- Set expectations about the purpose of the Planning Diagnostic. Before students start working, we recommend letting students know that this is not meant to be a test, but rather a way for you to see where they are so you can plan your instruction. Students aren’t expected to know the answer to every question.
- When creating your Planning Diagnostic, keep it to 4-6 skill areas to help manage the length of the assignment. While it's easy to add in more skills at the click of a button, you'll want to consider how many questions your students will have to answer.
- Leverage diagnostic results to help you identify different students' learning needs so that you can support them with differentiated instruction. You can use these tips to create differentiated assignments in NoRedInk.