Back to School '21-'22: What's New in NoRedInk

Welcome back! 👋

Our team has been working hard to build new features that will help your students become stronger writers.

At the beginning of a new school year, we know it’s important for you to get started on the right foot. Here’s a list of the improvements and changes you can expect to see when you log in to your NoRedInk account!

NoRedInk assignments can now be filtered by specific state and national standards

The Standards and Tests section of the Assignment Library allows teachers to browse NoRedInk's writing and grammar content by state standards and tests and quickly create assignments aligned to specific standards.. NoRedInk content aligns to the Common Core, all state-specific standards, AP Lang, and 3 national assessments: SAT, ACT, and MAP. Within each standard, you’ll find hundreds of aligned writing activities and grammar topics and that are ready to assign to your class. Learn more about how to create standards-aligned assignments here! 

Additional activities to support students' growth along standards or in preparation for tests

• State-specific Planning Diagnostics: Identify students's strengths and growth areas by quickly assigning pre-made Planning Diagnostics that are aligned to your state's standards by grade level.
• State test Guided Drafts: Provide just-in-time support as students respond to real past test prompts. Learn more here! 

NoRedInk now integrates with Canvas

NoRedInk's Canvas integration allows you to seamlessly create NoRedInk assignments for your classes all within Canvas. Assignments created in NoRedInk will draw from your existing class rosters in Canvas, and NoRedInk grades will automatically sync to your Canvas gradebook. Learn more here! 

The NoRedInk Canvas integration requires a subscription to NoRedInk Premium. Click here for more information.

New additions to Guided Drafts

 

Choose which parts of an essay to assign

When creating a Guided Draft, you can customize which parts of the essay are assigned and whether each part is required or optional. More information, including tips for implementation, is available here!

Add a Works Cited section to a Guided Draft

Additionally, we've added the option to include a Works Cited list to Guided Draft assignments. Students will be shown a lesson, tips, and exemplars for compiling a Works Cited list using MLA formatting. 

Customize rubric grading scales

You can now customize the scale for each individual rubric item on a Guided Draft by choosing any numbers between 0-10. You can choose to apply your custom scale to all rubric items or set a different scale for each individual criterion. Learn more here! 

Use Guided Drafts to prepare for State Test Essays

Our State Test Guided Drafts provide just-in-time support as students write practice essays. In these assignments, students will respond to real past test prompts, and we've provided the official state test rubric for you to grade them on. Students can practice drafting their essays with the support of tips and examples for strong writing in the appropriate genre. Learn more here! 

Assign additional genres with the free version of NoRedInk

Teachers using the free version of NoRedInk now have access to three genres of Guided Drafts: Argumentative, Narrative, and Literary Analysis. Learn more about Guided Drafts here! 

New additions to Quick Writes

 

Customize how Quick Writes are graded

You now have the ability to choose between three grading options when creating a Quick Write assignment. Quick Writes can be graded:

• Automatically based on word count
• Manually by entering a percentage grade
• Manually based on a rubric

Learn more about grading a Quick Write assignment here!  

Include sources with a Quick Write prompt

In addition to adding prompts, you can now include up to eight source texts that students will see as they work on a Quick Write assignment. Learn more about adding sources to writing assignments here!

We've added many new source texts for Quick Writes, which you can browse by genre or theme, to our Assignment library!

 

Leverage pre-made Quick Writes in a variety of instructional scenarios

We've expanded our library of prompts and source texts to help you quickly create assignments that serve a variety of needs, including

• Skill-building prompts: An excellent way for students to apply their learning from practice topics and add tools to their writing toolkit through short, fun, focused exercises.
• Mentor text prompts: These prompts present students with short, authentic pieces of writing that demonstrate a specific grammar or writing skill, and then help students apply that skill in their own writing.
• Social and Emotional Learning prompts:  Help students use writing to support social and emotional learning (SEL) in the classroom. We've included some tips for using NoRedInk to support SEL here.
• Back-to-school prompts: Kick off the school year and get to know your students with fun, lightweight, relationship-building prompts!
• Baseline writing assessments: Evaluate students' essay-writing skills at the start of the year, and use the results to decide what to assign on NoRedInk. Learn how to use these assessments here.

Improvements to Practice

Based on student and teacher feedback, we've made a few changes to the student experience within a Practice assignment. After testing these changes in the classroom, we’re confident that the changes listed below are another step in the direction to help all students have a positive learning experience. More information is available here!

Changes to "frozen mode" in Practice

When students get an answer incorrect, they now only have to get two correct in a row to move on to the next question instead of three.

• Students who tried this out said that they felt two in a row still focused them on learning from their mistakes, but alleviated the pressure of needing to get three correct in a row.
• Teachers who tried it out were really pleased with the level of student engagement they saw and didn’t notice any change in students’ understanding of the concepts (as measured by post quizzes).

Visual updates to the Practice interface

We also made some visual updates to students’ Practice interface:

1. A brighter, more prominent progress bar lets students know exactly where they are within their assignment.
2. Animations when students reach new levels of mastery offer encouragement and excitement.
3. Students will no longer see the purple “Not Quite” screen, something students said they didn’t like.

Additional resources to support you and your students

We've added many resources to the Help Center, including step-by-step guides and videos, to help you and your students get started using NoRedInk smoothly. 

• Getting Started with NoRedInk: Find everything you need to know about getting started with NoRedInk, including video overviews and step-by-step guides.
  
• Getting Started Guide for Students: Share with your students to help them get set up on NoRedInk -- includes a video overview!
• Instructional Resources: Browse sample lesson plans and resources for tailoring NoRedInk to meet your students' needs or specific instructional goals.