Readiness Checks in Projects

Readiness Checks are a short series of assessment items teachers can assign to classes before or at the beginning of a project.

This article covers:


Overview of Readiness Checks

What is a Readiness Check?

Readiness Checks allow teachers to gather information about students that are prerequisites to the upcoming project, such as:

  • Background knowledge
  • Understanding of concepts 
  • Skills 

All questions are auto-scored, meaning there is no manual scoring required by teachers. After the Readiness Check is complete, teachers can use student performance data to adjust lessons based on suggested actions like adding, deleting, or modifying specific project materials. 

Readiness Checks don’t affect students’ grades. However, they do provide students with a preview of the project and create anticipation around what they will engage with during the project. Readiness Checks are designed to be a learning experience for students, rather than solely an evaluation of knowledge.

What do Readiness Checks look like?

Readiness Checks vary in length, but should take students less than 15 minutes. They include a combination of item types, including multiple-choice, multiple-select, matching, and graphing questions. 

Where can I find information about the purpose of each Readiness Check? 

Each Readiness Check is accompanied by a Teacher's Guide. For each question, the Teacher's Guide provides:

  • An answer key
  • Aligned standards
  • A description of where students will need these skills during the project
  • Guidance on how to support students who need more help or who demonstrate understanding of each item. 

How should I interpret student performance on a Readiness Check?

Readiness Check data can be used to identify students’ understanding of prerequisite background knowledge, concepts, and skills that students need during the upcoming project.

Readiness Check data may suggest adding extra practice with some of the project's content, or show an opportunity to move more quickly through a topic to optimize instructional time. Review data in the Platform and use the platform-recommended actions to adjust your instructional plan. 

When deciding how to adjust your project plan, it’s important to remember that additional support should occur when this information is needed by students. Avoid starting a project with review lessons and instead carefully select which days’ instruction you want to adjust. Readiness Checks help with this by recommending activities to alter or replace on specific days.


Assigning Readiness Checks

Readiness Checks should be administered prior to starting, or at the beginning of, a new project.

  1. From the project page, click Assign Project in the top right corner.
  2. If you teach multiple sections, you can specify the section you’d like to assign in the upper right corner of the Assign screen.
  3. Select the start date and due date for the project and assign the final product(s) to students.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select Readiness Check and the student(s) you want to assign it to.

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  6. Click Done

How can I view what students see when taking a Readiness Check?

  1. On the project page, click Readiness Check.
  2. Select Preview to see what students see.

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Where can I find the Teacher's Guide?

For each question in the Readiness Check, the Teacher's Guide provides an answer key, a question narrative, aligned standards, a description of where students will need these skills in later lessons, and guidance on how to support students who need more help or who demonstrate understanding of each item.

On the Readiness Tab in the Overview page, navigate to the Teacher Resources section and click into the Teacher’s Guide.

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How do students complete the Readiness Check?

  1. On the Project Overview page, students click Start to begin the Readiness Check.

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  2. Students answer a few questions about the topics covered in the upcoming project. This should take them less than 15 minutes, but there is no time limit.

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  3. Once students finish their Readiness Check, they can review their answers by clicking Review my answers to see which questions they got right, and which they didn’t.

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  4. Once they click Review my answers, they can view their responses to each question and the correct answers.

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Looking at Readiness Check results

  1. From the course page, click on the project.
  2. From the Feedback tab, click the Readiness Check tab.
  3. On the Progress tab, you can view the status of students’ Readiness Checks to see who has completed it.
    • "Scored" status means the student has submitted the Readiness Check, and "Working" means the student has not yet submitted the Readiness Check.

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  4. On the Results tab, you can view the raw results of students’ responses.

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  5. On the Insights tab, you can view insights on how students answered the questions, along with ways you might adjust your lesson plan based on their topic knowledge.

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  6. You can see students’ results arranged by the topics covered in the project, and the question(s) related to it. The color-coded bar shows how students have answered each question.
      • The green bar shows the percentage of students who answered the question correctly.
      • The red bar shows the percentage of students who answered the question incorrectly.
      • The orange bar shows the percentage of students who answered the question partially correctly.
      • The gray bar shows the percentage of students who have not yet answered the question.
    question_bar.png

  7. Click View responses for the question if you want to look at individual student’s results.

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Adjusting lesson plans based on student results

  1. Go to the Feedback tab, and click into Insights.

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  2. Click Turn on reminder beside the actions you’d like to use in your lesson plan.
    • Once 70% of students have completed the Readiness Check, Recommended tags are shown beside the actions that may be most impactful for your class.

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3. This will add a reminder to the corresponding day in the project’s Plans tab reminding you of the change you want to make. The reminder only appears on your plans, even if other teachers are teaching this section.

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4. To view reminders by section, click the Section list and select the section you wish to see reminders for. 

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Which Projects have Readiness Checks?

As of Fall 2023, Readiness Checks will be available in the following projects:

Course Project
English 4 (EL Education) all projects
English 5 (EL Education) all projects
Modern World 1 Independence After Imperialism
Modern World 2 Pandemics
11th Grade US History We the People
The Living Earth Ecosystem Health
NGSS Integrated Science 7 A Balanced Biosphere
English 8 Poetry Slam
English 7 Rhythm and Flow
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