Educators love the rigor and challenge of our article quizzes. We have recently made some changes to keep what educators appreciate but better engage and encourage students. This will raise completion rates, boost students’ reading confidence, and make the quizzes more fun for everyone. Check out the fresh changes and gradebook recommendations below!

When a student begins an article quiz, they first must confirm they read the article. Their effort in reading the article will now be reflected in the quiz's final score.

Students may notice several upgrades as they progress through their quiz. Each question will now openly show its difficulty as either a Warm-up Question, a Target Question, or a Challenge Question. (These labels roughly correspond to Easy, Medium, and Hard questions.)

Students will also see how many points they can earn for the Leaderboard. Each time they complete a question, the display will update to show how many points have been earned and how many are still available.

At the end of each quiz, students will see a breakdown of their score. This report will show them how well they did overall and what percentage each question was worth.

Along with these other positive updates, many students will see an improvement in their article quiz scores. These scores, which better reflect their on-level performance and effort, will encourage them as they develop their love for reading.

Educators will still enjoy all the options they need while assigning quizzes. They will also continue to have access to both summaries and comprehensive reports showing a student’s performance on each article quiz.

The first improvement that educators will notice is how quizzes are scored. Reading the article rewards the student with 40% of their final score. As for the questions, easy and medium questions now have more weight. Hard questions have less weight.

Here’s the final score breakdown:

Educators will see an increase in completion rates and student engagement. Students will also, in general, make higher scores. These positive changes make articles an even better tool in helping your students improve their reading skills and develop their own love for reading.

Many educators give grades for Zinc articles. For all Zinc activities, we recommend using a rubric or other holistic grading tool in adding scores to the gradebook. For example, award points for completion, but add points for students who score over 80% on a section.

Depending on the assignment, please keep in mind that the system adjusts content for a student's reading level, so students will have very individual experiences. For instance, students choosing their own article quizzes may see completely different articles based on their Zinc Level. Using completion as the primary rubric is probably the most fair option.

There are many options for putting articles assignments in the gradebook, and you should of course do what works best for you and your students.

Here are the most important takeaways about the new article scoring: