Supporting All Students
1. Analyze the data from your unit diagnostic to inform your planning.
We recommend beginning with a Unit Diagnostic to assess areas of strength and need. This allows you to use data to meet students at their skill level.
Once you’ve given a Unit Diagnostic for the Pathway or concept your students are about to learn, note which topics students struggled with under the callouts at the top. Explore the “Display” drop-down menu to view student performance on individual topics in your diagnostic.
Determine which skills need full-class instruction and which should be differentiated.
2. Differentiate Practice
If you assigned a Unit Diagnostic, use the “Create Unit” button to assign differentiated practice. Assign the more foundational topics from your diagnostic to students in the Below Basic or Basic proficiency bands and the more complex topics to students in the Proficient or Advanced bands.
When assigning Practice generally, remember that NoRedInk Pathways are comprised of topics listed in a meaningful scope and sequence. Topics that come first in a Pathway are always the most fundamental building blocks, while later topics are more complex. Struggling students may benefit from “Part 1” topics before moving forward in the Pathway.
💡Reminder: Pre-teaching before Practice benefits all students!
3. Differentiate Writing
When assigning Quick Writes or Guided Essays, consider creating differentiated assignments by customizing the prompt or rubric to meet the needs of your students.
One of the most powerful ways to differentiate a Guided Essay is by customizing the parts of the essay to be completed. For example, you may assign body paragraphs as required for all students, but offer introductions and conclusions as an optional challenge for high performers.
Supporting Struggling Students
1. Chunk Practice assignments
We’ve found that 2-4 topics per assignment keeps students engaged without feeling overwhelmed. If you break up your unit into multiple Practice assignments, you can:
- Slow down to lay a strong foundation for the students who need it.
- Create extension activities, like Checkpoints and Quick Writes, for high-achieving students.
2. Pre-teach and model
Pre-teaching before Practice in NoRedInk can make a big difference in student motivation, confidence, and performance. Consider connecting your computer to a projector to show students Tutorials, Lessons, and Practice questions before they begin.
Extension Activities in NoRedInk
1. Formative assessments with “Quiz Me”
If students finish an assignment early, have them self-assess their understanding before a quiz by using the “Quiz Me” feature on any topic they’ve already mastered!
💡If a student misses any questions on the “quiz”, the practice will re-open!
2. Skill-Building Quick Writes
Skill-Building Quick Writes are easy-to-assign activities that ask students to apply what they’ve learned in Practice to their own writing. Assign a pre-made Skill Building Quick Write as an extension for more advanced students, or as a whole-class activity when everyone has completed Practice.
3. Passage-based quizzes
Because NoRedInk’s passage-based quizzes allow students to work on a diverse set of errors at both the sentence and paragraph levels, they assess skills more authentically and with greater rigor.
4. Encourage students to practice independently
Students can always visit the Learn page to practice any topics independently.
💡Teacher pro-tip: Do you have students studying for a standardized test? Have them track their own progress using the filters on the Learn page!
Articles in this section
- What is the difference between Diagnostics, Practice, and Quizzes?
- Assign students to new and existing assignments
- How do I make sure students can see the assignments I've created?
- Browse and create assignments from the Assignment Library
- NoRedInk Skill-Building Modules
- Navigating the "My Assignments" page
- Locating assignment answer keys
- Deleting an assignment and its scores
- Creating standards-aligned assignments in NoRedInk
- Differentiating based on student mastery or performance