Can I lock the Free Reading Assessment to prevent students from working on it outside of class?

If your district has chosen to purchase Assessment Series in CommonLit School Essentials PRO or School Essentials PRO Plus, you will not have access to the Free Reading Assessment. Instead, you’ll be able to collect baseline data through the first assessment in the Assessment Series. You’ll also have access to a Mid-Year and a Post-Assessment to help you track students’ reading growth throughout the reading year.

Teachers can lock an assessment for an entire class or specific students in order to prevent students from resuming the assessment outside of the class period. Locking an assessment saves all existing progress for students who had started but not yet submitted their assessment and removes the assessment from their My Assignments page. 

To lock an assessment for an entire class once the start date has arrived, find the assessment on your Assignments page and click on the assessment name. Then, from the assessment's Student Status page, click Lock All over in the top right corner and click the teal LOCK ASSESSMENT button at the bottom of the window that appears.

To unlock the assessment whenever you're ready to do so, simply click Unlock All next to Lock All. This will restore your students' assessments, and the assessment will appear again on their My Assignments page.

To lock an assessment for a specific student once the start date has arrived, from the same page, find the student's name, click on Actions under the Actions column, and click Lock. Then, click the teal LOCK ASSESSMENT button at the bottom of the window that appears. When you're ready to unlock the assessment for the student, click on Actions for that student's assessment and select Unlock. Once you unlock the assessment, it will appear for the student on their My Assignments page.

Interested in getting affordable, rigorous benchmark assessments at your school or district to track student reading progress over the course of the year? Learn more about CommonLit's Assessments here.