How do I assign and manage a Unit Skills Assessment?

Overview

Unit Skills Assessments are formative reading comprehension checks intended to provide you with additional information about student learning throughout a 360 unit. There are two assessments included in each unit, and they are intentionally placed to best reflect skill coverage and text complexity at specific points in each 360 unit.

In this article, we cover:

1. Assigning a Unit Skills Assessment
   1. Locating the assessment
   2. Assigning the assessment
   3. Assigning to a small group
2. Managing a Unit Skills Assessment
   1. Editing the start or due date
   2. Sharing the assessment
   3. Locking, exempting, and force submitting assessments
3. Grading & viewing data for a Unit Skills Assessment
   1. Grading an assessment (required when short answer is assigned)
   2. Viewing assessment data
   3. Releasing scores to students
4. Requesting a PDF

Assigning a Unit Skills Assessment

To maximize the utility of Unit Skills Assessments, CommonLit advises administering the USAs in the order they are presented within the unit. Switching the order of the assessments will compromise the intentional alignment to skills, genres, and background knowledge.

Locating an assessment

Unit Skills Assessment are located in the Lesson & Materials section on each Unit Page. To locate a Unit Skills Assessment, choose 360 Curriculum (the shooting star) in the menu on the left. This will take you to the Grade Level page that corresponds to the lowest grade level listed on your account. If you need to view a different Grade Level page, use the dropdown at the top to choose a different grade. Finally, select the unit you are teaching.

On the Unit Page, you can click Unit Lessons and Materials at the top or scroll down until you reach that section. Click on the tile for the assessment you'd like to assign to open the Unit Skills Assessment page.

Assigning the assessment

On the Unit Skills Assessment page, you can view a student preview of the assessment and access the answer key. To assign the assessment, follow the steps below:

1. Click the + Assign This Lesson button in the top right
2. Select the class(es) you'd like to assign the assessment
3. Set the start and due dates (Note: students can submit the assessment after the due date has passed.)
   1. [Optional]: Set a start and/or due time. CommonLit assignments become available at 3am ET on the start date. Setting a start time ensures students are unable to access the assessment prior to the time you set. Like due dates, students can still submit the assessment after the due time has passed. If you want to prevent students from accessing the assessment once the due date/time has passed, see: Locking, exempting, and force submitting assessments.
4. Select which questions you want to assign. Multiple-choice questions are automatically scored by CommonLit; short-answer questions need to be manually scored by the teacher.
   1. All assessment questions: This is the default setting and assigns all multiple-choice questions and the short-answer question
   2. Only multiple-choice questions: This will assign only the multiple-choice questions
5. Click the Assign button to finish assigning the assessment.  

Assigning to a small group

At this time, you are only able to assign Unit Skills Assessments to an entire class. 

If you would like to assign a Unit Skills Assessment to an individual student or small group, we recommend assigning the assessment to your entire class and then exempting students who will not be taking the assessment. This will ensure the assessment only appears on the My Assignments page for students who have not been exempted.

For information on how to exempt students from an assessment, see: Locking, exempting, and force submitting assessments.

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Managing a Unit Skills Assessment

Once an assessment has been assigned, you can still manage the assessment from the Assignments page and Assignment Dashboard.

Editing the start or due date

You can edit the start or due date and times as long as no students have started the assessment. To edit these fields, locate the assessment on your Assignments page. Then, click the three stacked dots on the far right of the row (you may need to scroll to the right to see this) and choose Edit. From there, you can edit the start or due date and times and click Save changes.

Please note, editing the start or due date and times for one class does not impact the scheduled dates and times for an assessment in another class, so each class' assessment will need to be edited separately.

Sharing the assessment

You can copy the link for a Unit Skills Assessment by clicking the three stacked dots on the far right of the row (you may need to scroll to the right to see this) and choosing Copy Assignment Link. You can then use that link to direct students to the assessment.

Additionally, Unit Skills Assessments can be posted to Google Classroom and Canvas just like assignments. For more information, please see the corresponding FAQ:

• Google Classroom: Can I post CommonLit assignments to my stream?
• Canvas: How do I post or add an assignment?

Locking, exempting, and force submitting assessments

From the Assignment Dashboard, you can manage students' access to an assessment by locking, exempting, or force submitting. To navigate to the Assignment Dashboard, click My Classes, locate the assessment for the student's class, and click the name of the assessment.

Locking an assessment

To lock the assessments for the entire class, click Lock All above the Student Status table. To lock assessments for specific students, locate the student in the Student Status table and click Lock.

When you are ready for students to resume the assessment, return to the Assignment Dashboard and click Unlock All to unlock all students' assessments or click Unlock for specific students to unlock their assessments.

Please note, locking the assessment does not remove it from the My Assignments page for students, but they will not be able to open the assessment.

Exempting an assessment

To exempt a student, locate the student in the Student Status table and click Exempt. Once the student has been exempted, they will no longer see the assessment on their My Assignments page, and the assessment will not be included in their Student Performance.

Force submitting an assessment

You can force submit a student's assessment if you want them to receive a score based on what they completed. To force submit an assessment, locate the student in the Student Status table and click Force Submit. This will move the Unit Skills Assessment to the Grading in Progress section of their My Assignments page, and they will no longer be able to edit their answers.

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Grading & viewing data for a Unit Skills Assessment

Grading an assessment (required when short answer is assigned)

Multiple choice questions on Unit Skills Assessments are automatically scored. However, if you assigned the short answer, you will need to grade student responses manually. Please note, if the short answer was assigned, you will not be able to view multiple-choice data until a student's short answer is graded. Instead, you will see N/A for the multiple-choice questions when viewing the Assessment Report. Additionally, the short answer cannot be removed once it has been assigned. For information on assigning the Unit Skills Assessment without the short answer, please see: Assigning the assessment.

To grade students' short answers, go to your Assignments page, select the Unit Skills Assessment, and choose the Grading tab. You will see a list of student responses, with ungraded responses at the top. Assign each response a score of 0 - 4 and, optionally, enter any feedback into the My Feedback box. Then, click Save & Next to automatically move on to the next ungraded response (or Save if there are no other responses to grade).

For information on how to grade short answer responses on 360 Reading Lessons and Unit Skills Assessments, please see the Short Answer Scoring Guide. You can also find this guide linked just above students' responses on the Grading page.

Viewing assessment data

To view the data for a Unit Skills Assessment, navigate to the Assignment Dashboard by selecting the assessment on your Assignments page. Then, choose the Assessment Report tab.

At the top of the page, you will see the Overall Class Data section which provides a high-level overview of student performance. Here, you can see a class average as well as separate breakdowns for student performance on multiple choice questions and short answer responses (if assigned). There is also a Scores Breakdown pie chart visualizing student overall performance in the class.

Below the Overall Class Data section is the Assessment Results section, which includes two performance tables: Standards Performance and Item Analysis. Each Unit Skills Assessment assesses focus standards for the unit. In the Standards Performance table, you will see students' overall scores as well as their average by individual standard assessed on the USA.

To see how students performed on individual questions, scroll to the Item Analysis table. This table also includes students' overall scores as well as their performance on individual questions. Questions in this table are grouped by standard.

To download a report for your records, click the Download report button at the top of the Assessment Results section.

Releasing scores to students

You can release scores once at least one student has submitted their assessment and the short answer has been graded (if assigned). However, if you prefer, you can wait until all students have submitted their assessment. Scores can only be released once, so if you choose to release scores before all students have submitted, students who submit after scores were released will be able to see their score as soon as their assessment has been fully scored and graded.

To release scores, go to your Assignments page by clicking My Classes and select the assessment for the class. From the Assignment Dashboard, click the Release Scores button above the Student Assignment Status table. In the window that appears, confirm you want to release scores.

Please note, for test security, it is not possible to share the correct answers with students on Unit Skills Assessments. Students will only be able to see their overall score, multiple choice percent correct, short answer score (if assigned), and any written response feedback.

Additionally, the Unit Skills Assessment will not be accessible from their My Assignments page once it has been submitted. To view their performance on the assessment, they can click My Performance in the menu on the left and look for the assessment in the Submitted Assignments section.

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Requesting a PDF

To protect the academic integrity of CommonLit assessments, Unit Skills Assessment PDFs cannot be downloaded directly from the lesson page. If you are a teacher or administrator and require the PDF of a Unit Skills Assessment, please reach out to your Account Manager or help@commonlit.org to request a PDF.

Please include the following information in your email:

1. The grade level(s)
2. If grades 9 - 12, the Edition (1.0 or 2.0)
3. The unit(s)
4. The assessment(s)
5. The reason for the request (e.g. accommodations, lack of technology, etc.)

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