how to assign assignments in quill

Assigning A Unit Template

Featured activity packs page.

Teachers can assign a featured activity pack by navigating to the Featured Activity Packs page and selecting the activity pack they'd like to assign. From that page, they can choose to either

• Assign to All Students, which will assign every student in each of their classes, or
• Customize Students, which will allow them to select individual classes or students to assign the unit template to.

Recommendations

Each of the recommendations that are made when a student completes the diagnostic are unit templates. The Personalized Independent Practice Recommendations all point to unit templates comprised of Connect activities, while the Collaborative Class Lessons Recommendations are unit templates with Lessons activities. Teachers can assign these to individual students or the entire class by clicking on the Diagnostics tab under Student Reports and then on 'Recommendations' once an individual class' diagnostic assessment has been selected.

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What is Quill and How Can It Be Used for Teaching? Tips & Tricks

Quill is a digital tool designed to help students with reading, writing and comprehension

Quill was created as a free tool designed to be used in education and at home as a way to work on reading, writing, and comprehension skills.

You might think that being free this is lacking in some areas. But right from the premium website build quality to the layout that's clearly had a lot of thought put into it, this is a top tool when it comes to language building.

This nonprofit aims to help a wide variety of kids, from elementary thru middle and right up to high school. That means a selection of OER content right across the curriculum that can help students of varying ages and abilities.

As a result, Quill has been used by more than seven million students to write a massive two billion sentences. Here's all you need to know about Quill.

What is Quill?

Quill is a digital website-based tool that is designed to work alongside the curriculum to help improve student reading comprehension, writing, and language skills.

This is designed for use by students directly, via teachers, administrators, or guardians -- which can help tailor this to even younger students or those that might struggle working alone.

The tool focuses on grammar and writing in order to help students develop. This is done using a selection of area specific tools, all of which are tailored to Common Core skills and even offer differentiation for the likes of ELL, AP English, and pre-AP too.

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Crucially, this will all work in a way that can be tailored to the individual needs of each student. So you can work to specific targets to achieve results that are tangible and help in student progress through the year.

How does Quill work?

Quill is very simple to use, initially letting you select which user you are: Student, Teacher, Admin, or Guardian. You can then sign up with your details or use Google or Facebook for quick sign-in to get started right away. You are then able to select the grade ranges you will teach as well as the subjects required including English, Math, Science, History, and more.

You are able to create a class and add students, which is very easily integrated if your institution already uses Google Classroom. You can let students create their own accounts or make ones for them using their names. You then have the option to download a PDF with usernames and passwords listed for all the students, making access for them simple.

It is possible to assign activities to students or the class as a whole. Usefully, there is a diagnostic tool that can be used to assess student ability, so you know which projects will be a good fit for them to work on that are suited to their skills and needs.

Select lessons to get started with options such as Compound Objects and Predicates for grade 7 and above in which students learn to combine sentences by using compound objects and predicates. 

The basic breakdown of tools is Diagnostics, Lessons, Connect, Grammar, and Proofreader. More on these in the next section.

Teachers and guardians then have a dashboard through which progress can be monitored and new work assigned as needed.

What are the best Quill features?

Quill has some very powerful tools that are tailored to ability, which allows students to progress at a rate that is challenging but without being off-putting.

Quill Diagnostic is a super helpful way to assess a student's skill level, which then helps them to be guided toward what it is that they should be doing to make improvements in the areas they need it.

The Quill Lessons are for larger groups, or the class as a whole. These offer writing prompts as well as discussion topics to allow for creative writing as a group or independently.

Quill Connect is a helpful tool that focuses on sentence writing. This aims to build sentence-writing skills to create a more complex end result in which the students know the building blocks used to get to that end result.

The Grammar tool is another helpful addition that offers more writing activities, only this time, as you may have guessed, with a grammar focus.

The new Reading for Evidence tool offers non-fiction texts with AI-powered writing prompts that use the text for evidence for students as they write out their work.

Finally, the Proofreader tool offers students certain passages of text with mistakes, which need to be spotted and fixed in order to progress.

How much does Quill cost?

Quill is primarily free to use although there is the option to go for a Premium upgrade to get more detailed reporting. For the free access you are required to sign-up using an email address, although students don't need to do this if you don't want that.

The Teacher Premium option, charged at $80 per teacher per year, can be tailored for free for 30 days before you decide if you could benefit from the extra features. These include more data reports including activity scores report, concepts report, standards report, and data export capabilities. 

A School and District Premium option is available, at $1,800 per school per year, which gets you all the above plus monthly usage reports and an admin dashboard, plus Clever Secure sync, unlimited teacher licenses, priority technical support, and Quill Academy access.

Quill best tips and tricks

Start as a class Teach a lesson in the room so students can get to grips with how the platform works, before letting them progress individually or outside of school time.

Use the lights Student mastery is shown in red, orange, or green so teachers can assess at-a-glance using the dashboard, helping flag when students need help or perhaps could be challenged more.

Proofread Use the Quill Proofreader tool as a class to work through errors in the text and feedback what happened at each point so everyone can learn as a group.

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Luke Edwards is a freelance writer and editor with more than two decades of experience covering tech, science, and health. He writes for many publications covering health tech, software and apps, digital teaching tools, VPNs, TV, audio, smart home, antivirus, broadband, smartphones, cars and much more.

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Learn how to assign a Quill Diagnostic to your students.

We recommend that teachers initially assign a Quill Diagnostic to assess students’ writing skills. After students complete a Quill Diagnostic, Quill will create a plan of practice recommendation activities for each student based on their performance on the Quill Diagnostic.

Table of Contents

How to assign a Quill Diagnostic

How to assign a Quill Diagnostic (Video Tutorial)

How to assign a previously assigned quill diagnostic to more students, access and understand quill diagnostic reports, assign quill diagnostic practice recommendation activities, how to assign a quill diagnostic  .

1 . Navigate to the Assign Activities page.

2 . Click the Assess student writing with a diagnostic card to access the Quill Diagnostics available to you to assign .

3 . Click the Preview hyperlink to the right of a Quill Diagnostic's name to preview it. Then, click the Select button for the Quill Diagnostic that you would like to assign. If this is your first time assigning a Quill Diagnostic, select a Baseline Diagnostic .

📝 A Baseline Diagnostic is a pre-test and is intended to initially assess a student's writing skills so that Quill can create a plan of practice recommendation activities based on the student's performance on the Baseline Diagnostic. ​

📈 A Growth Diagnostic is a post-test and is intended to subsequently assess a student's writing skills after they have already completed the corresponding Baseline Diagnostic and the practice recommendation activities associated with the Baseline Diagnostic. After a student completes a Growth Diagnostic, Quill will create a plan of practice recommendation activities based on the student's performance on the Growth Diagnostic. Please note that the practice recommendation activities for the Growth Diagnostic will be different from those for the Baseline Diagnostic. For this reason, a Growth Diagnostic will be locked until you have assigned its corresponding Baseline Diagnostic.

Tip 💡 ​ Click here to learn more about each Quill Diagnostic and Writing Skills Survey that Quill offers and the writing skills that each assesses.

4 . After clicking the Select button for a Quill Diagnostic, you will see the Review and assign page, which will have three sections. ​

a. In the Name the assignment section, name the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic. The default for the activity pack's name is the name of the Quill Diagnostic that you selected, but you may change the name to anything that you wish.

b. In the Review activities and pick due dates section, you have the options to set a Publish date (the date that this activity pack will appear in your students' Quill accounts), set a Due date , and determine if you have previously assigned the Quill Diagnostic .

c. In the Choose classes or students section, select the classes and students to whom you would like to assign the Quill Diagnostic. If you would like to assign the Quill Diagnostic to only some students in a class, check the box to the left of the class's name, click the All students dropdown menu, and uncheck the names of students to whom you would not like to assign the Quill Diagnostic.

d. Once you have completed the steps in all three sections, click the Assign pack to classes button in the upper right corner of the page to finish assigning the Quill Diagnostic.

5. After you have clicked the Assign pack to classes button, students will be able to either immediately access the Quill Diagnostic in their Quill accounts or on the Publish date that you specified . Please click here to learn more about students' Quill accounts and login information.

To assign a previously assigned Quill Diagnostic to new students, please navigate to the Manage Activities page.

Search for the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic that you would like to assign to more students.

Tip 💡 Use the search shortcut Ctrl + f or Command + f to quickly search for the Quill Diagnostic by its name.

After finding the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic, click the Add/remove students assigned button for that activity pack.

Clicking the Add/remove students assigned button will bring you a page containing rosters for each of your classes.

If the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic is not yet assigned to a student, the box next to the student's name will not be checked, and you will see no copy to the far right of the student's name.

To assign the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic to a student who is not yet assigned the activity pack, check the box to the left of the student's name. After checking the box next to the student's name, you will see the copy, Pack will be assigned , to the right of the student's name.

To assign the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic to an entire class, click the Select all button for that class.

Once you have selected all the students to whom you would like to assign the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic, click the Update students assigned to pack button in the upper right corner of the page.

Please click here to learn more about assigning and unassigning existing activity packs to and from new students.

Tip 💡 Please note that if a student is already assigned the activity pack containing the Quill Diagnostic, unchecking the box next to their name will unassign the Quill Diagnostic from that student and remove that student's data for the Quill Diagnostic, so please keep the box next to a student's name checked if you would like to keep their data for the Quill Diagnostic. The student will not be reassigned the Quill Diagnostic. Please click here to learn more about assigning and unassigning existing activity packs to and from new students.

To access Quill Diagnostic reports and assign practice recommendation activities, please navigate to the Diagnostics report in the View Reports tab.

You may use the dropdown menu in the upper left corner of the page to select a class and only see the Quill Diagnostics assigned to that class.

Find the Quill Diagnostic for which you would like to see reports and click the respective View results and recommendations button.

On the left side of the subsequent page, you will see a menu with all of the reports available for a Quill Diagnostic. Please click the links below to learn more about each of these reports.

Class summary : View the average proficiency for each writing skill for your whole class.

Student results report: View the proficiency for each writing skill for each individual student.

Practice recommendations report: View and assign practice recommendation activities that Quill recommends based on each student's performance on the Quill Diagnostic.

Student responses report: View the number and percentage of writing skills for which each student submitted correct responses and view each student's responses for each prompt in the Quill Diagnostic.

Questions analysis report: View the percentage of a class that submitted a correct response for ea ch prompt in the Quill Diagnostic.

To assign practice recommendation activities, please navigate to the Diagnostics report in the View Reports tab.

On the left side of the subsequent page, you will see a menu with all of the reports available for a Quill Diagnostic. Please click the Practice recommendations tab to see the Practice recommendations report and assign practice recommendation activities.

Please click here to see instructions for assigning practice recommendation activities.

Have more questions?

Please feel free to send a message to the Quill team using the green message bubble on the bottom right corner of the screen or email us at [email protected] . 

• Quill Connect
• Quill Lessons

Quill Diagnostic

• Quill Proofreader
• Quill Grammar
• Quill Reading for Evidence

Quickly determine which skills your students need to work on with our diagnostic activities. The diagnostics cover vital sentence construction skills and generate personalized learning plans based on your students‘ performance.

What's Being Tested

The diagnostics cover fundamental areas of sentence structure, giving you insight into your students’ ability to effectively create both basic and advanced sentences.

ELL Diagnostic

Student Responses Analyzed

Quill automatically analyzes and grades open-ended responses. It identifies the writing skills students have mastered, as well as the ones they need to practice.

Recommended Activities

You can then view a variety of reports to identify individual student and class-wide learning gaps. Quill generates a personalized learning plan for students based on where they need the most help.

Evidence Based

The diagnostics evaluate student writing using an evidence based strategy called sentence combining. This strategy explicitly teaches students how to write sophisticated, complex sentences.

Check out the research.

The diagnostics assess students and then automatically builds a personalized learning plan for each student.

The diagnostics cover a number of critical sentence structure skills, such as fragments and run-on sentences. In this exercise, students use the dependent clause to write a complete sentence.

In this exercise, students transform a run-on sentence into a complete sentence.

Teachers see reports that state exactly which errors the students made.

Try It Out for Yourself

"It was very useful to see which concepts students needed more help with. It is extremely beneficial if I want to work on grouping students based on skill."

Norma Bonilla, Downtown College Prep

Sign up to start using a quill diagnostic in your class today.