Building a template

In Board Templates, choose New template. It asks for a name and a subject, and Create and open it takes you straight in. The setup is at the top of the page, and the board it makes is drawn underneath, for six pretend children, changing as you type.

Beside the subject is Grade. It is optional, and worth setting: it decides which standards you are offered later, so a Kindergarten template shows you Kindergarten standards instead of every grade your district teaches.

Preview Pane, at the top of the page, says where that board is drawn: Off for the setup on its own, or the two pictures beside it — the preview underneath the setup, or to the right of it. On a laptop, side by side lets you watch a column appear as you name it; on a smaller screen, or when you are adding twenty rows at once, Off gives the setup the whole page. It stays as you left it, on this and every template, until you change it.

Units

First choose what your curriculum calls its sections — Units, Chapters, Modules, CFAs or Centers — then Add Unit 1. Each one is a tab along the top of the board, in the order listed here. Pick one to set it up: Unit name renames it, and the arrows beside it move it earlier or later.

How you'll mark it

Four ways, each shown as the buttons it gives you: Items for letters, words, sentences or spelling, where you tap the ones a child misses; Questions for a question paper, marked correct, half or missed; Rubric for objectives scored 1 to 4; Checklist for something you watch for — yes, or not yet.

What you'll mark

Under What you'll mark, each row is one thing you mark, and the button under the list adds another. Drag a row by its handle to order the columns on the board.

For Items, choose Add an objective, name the Objective, then type the letters and words: a comma between letters, each word or sentence on its own line. They appear underneath as the tiles you'll tap — four letters is out of 4. An objective with no words asks what it is out of instead. A question asks for its Objective and its Points; its Question # is shown beside it rather than typed, because it is where the question sits — drag a question up the list and the ones below it renumber themselves. A rubric or checklist objective needs only its name.

A question can also carry Question text — the question as it is written on the paper. It is optional, and it is shown on the one-child screen, so you can read the question you are marking without the paper in front of you. It is not on the grid, where there is no room for it.

Once scores are recorded on a unit, its letters and words and how it's marked are locked. Let me change them unlocks them, and what you change changes those children's results in every class using the template.

Standards

Under each row, + Standard opens the list your district follows. It opens on your template's own grade and subject, grouped the way your state groups them — Phonics and Word Recognition, Counting and Cardinality — with the lettered parts sitting under the standard they belong to. Open a group to read it, or search: type any words in any order, and it looks in both the code and the words, so decode cvc finds it as well as K.FL.PWR.3d does.

Tick as many as the question covers and choose Add to this question. Nothing is saved while you are still reading, and Cancel leaves the question exactly as it was. The row's Objective is attached to every standard you tick, so a report can say how the class did on that part of it.

If your template is Phonics you are shown the literacy standards, and if it is Math the maths ones. Show all widens the list to everything your district follows, and Narrow to this template puts it back.

Can't find one? Add a standard of your own asks what it is in your own words, with a code only if it has one. It goes to your school's list, where your school or district administrator can see it, reword it or retire it — and your teammates at your school can use it too.

In the board below, Whole class and One child are the two screens you record on, and Fill in pretend scores fills them in so you can see the colours first. On a phone the board follows the setup down the page. There is no Save button; the header says All changes saved.