If you are a SpringBoard user, please review this special message about continuing with Zinc Learning Labs after the 2024 to 2025 school year.

Zinc Learning Labs is an effective platform for strengthening your students’ reading skills and encouraging a life-long love of reading. Equip your teachers with a tool that creates assignments in minutes and provides their students with weeks of individualized, auto-leveled content. As administrators, you can track success at the student, classroom, school, and district level with our powerful reports.

Zinc is built for middle school, junior high school, and high school students, and it demonstrates measurable benefits. When students make progress with Zinc, those gains remain throughout the school year. Testing shows that 42% of students reading on grade level who complete our Ignition program advance at least one Zinc reading level throughout the year. Students reading below grade level saw more drastic improvements — they went up at least one reading level in just a few weeks.

This article is intended for administrators who are helping their teachers get the most out of Zinc. Please use the table of contents to the right to quickly access specific topics, including purchasing licenses for your students, rostering options, and registering for Zinc.

Zinc Support is available to help answer your questions. Click the blue speech balloon in the bottom right of Zinc or use our support contact form.

Access to Zinc is available in the form of student licenses. Schools or districts may purchase a number of student licenses for specific classes, grades, or campuses. Each license allows for one student account. Licenses are fully transferred from an inactive student to an active student.

Teachers and administrator accounts are provided for free, and you may have as many as you need. Any number of administrator accounts may be added easily, and every teacher connected to a Zinc class will have full access. Zinc classes support co-teachers.

If you are interested in hearing more about how Zinc can help your students improve their reading skills, or if you are interested in purchasing additional licenses, please fill out our contact form. We look forward to hearing from you!

If you are a SpringBoard user who would like to continue with Zinc after the 2024-2025 school year, please click here for special information.

If you are currently using Zinc Learning Labs, we hope you choose to continue. We offer valuable benefits for students and educators. Our team continually adds more content and fine-tunes our features.

While students often see benefits from Zinc right away, more positive aspects of Zinc emerge with consistent use in a district. You can track individual student growth over time, observe trends in specific reading skills, and help nurture the love of reading from year to year.

To renew with Zinc, please email us at partnerships@zinclearninglabs.com. We are always happy to help you make the most informed decision possible for your school or district.

Districts and schools can connect Zinc with several of the most popular rostering platforms. You may also roster with Zinc directly.

Zinc has the ability to sync with rosters in Clever, Google Classroom, Classlink (OneRoster), and SpringBoard. Student, teacher, and administrator accounts will be created automatically. Zinc classes will reflect your active rosters, and they will update automatically when changes are made.

Rostering with Zinc directly allows you to manage classes and users inside Zinc. Rosters may be uploaded to Zinc using spreadsheets, or users may register themselves using codes. In the event codes are used, teachers are given school codes. Once a teacher creates a class, they may add students to a class manually or email students a class code for registration.

For more details about managing rosters, please click click your method of rostering below. These articles explain how to update your classes, refresh your rosters, archive old classes, and more.

If you access Zinc through Clever, Classlink (OneRoster), or SpringBoard, your Zinc account will be created automatically. Please proceed to Sign In to Zinc.

If you choose to roster with Zinc directly or Google Classroom, we will manually create any Admin accounts you require. You should receive log in directions by email.

If you are unable to sign into your admin account, of if you require any additional admin accounts, please contact Zinc Support. You can click the blue speech balloon in the bottom right of Zinc or use our support contact form.

The way your school or district accesses Zinc determine how you sign into Zinc. Below, you will find directions for Clever, Google Classroom, Classlink, Direct, and SpringBoard users. If you're unsure which method to use, please contact Zinc Support.

If you try to log into Zinc and see an error message that says "You have to confirm your email before continuing," then you need to check your email for a message from Zinc. Follow the link in that email to confirm your email address.

If you are unable to find the confirmation email from Zinc Learning Labs, please check your spam folder. If you need the email to be resent, please type your email or username and password into the Sign in to Zinc Learning Labs page. You will see the error message followed by "Click here to re-send your verification email." Click "here" to have the email sent again.
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If you go through this process but are unable to verify your email, please contact Zinc Support.

If you access Zinc through Clever or ClassLink, click the correct button on the Sign In page and follow the instructions. You may need to grant Zinc the necessary permissions to continue. The first time you reach your Zinc homepage, you may need to click the "Register" button to begin.

If you roster with Zinc directly or through Google Classroom, go to the Sign In page and log in using your email and password.

Please not, we must manually create accounts for administrators for districts or schools who roster with Zinc directly or with Google Classroom. If you are unable to sign in or require additional admin accounts, please contact Zinc Support.

The process for logging into Zinc through SpringBoard is simple.

When you first log into Zinc, you'll see your homepage or Zinc Dashboard. The top of the page is your menu with three main choices: “Home” will bring you back to your Dashboard, “Assign Activities” shows you the Zinc features you can assign to students.

Under “View Classes & Reports,” you can manage students or classes, view assigned activities, explore reports, look at the leaderboard, visit your bookmarks, or check out free teacher resources.

In the top right-hand corner, you'll see a question mark (?) that will bring you to this help page. There's also a bell that shows notifications. The circle with your initials or a profile picture will take you to your profile page. Clicking the leaf in the top left-hand corner will always bring you back to your Dashboard. Clicking the blue circle in the bottom-right corner will contact Zinc Support.

Your students and teachers have their own Zinc Dashboard and menu, which is fully explained in their How to Use Zinc for Students and How to Use Zinc for Teachers guides.

For a printable, in-depth guide on using Zinc in your classrooms throughout the year, please click here!

Zinc offers teachers and students a variety of activities to boost reading skills. Each option provides content for readers at a third grade to a college level. With a few clicks, teachers create assignments for entire classes, individual students, or specific groups of students.

While teachers often handle Zinc assignments for their classes, administrators also have the ability to assign Zinc activities. This can be particularly helpful for reading intervention. To avoid confusion, we recommend that admins ask teachers to create assignments for their own classes.

While school and admin accounts are not teachers and are not assigned classes, Zinc can manually assign a special Instructional Coach role on request. Instructional coaches may have their own classes and students, and they have the same ability to create assignments outside of their classes and generate school reports at any school where they are active. If you need an educator to have the instructional coach role, please contact support by filling out the contact form or clicking the blue bubble on your Zinc homepage.
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Our flagship two-week reading program is Ignition, a hyper-differentiated, student-paced series of lessons on Zinc's four essential reading skills. Students start with a Level Placement assessment, which allows Ignition to provide appropriate and challenging content. Students then make their way through passages and questions with the direction of friendly video guides. As needed, students receive extra instruction and practice on the skills that especially challenge them. At the completion of Ignition, students take a final Level Placement to measure their growth.

We recommend students continue to practice the skills they learn in Ignition with Lift Off. Lift Off is a four-week, auto-leveled program with a focus on student choice. Lift Off utilizes Zinc’s extensive library of real-life texts and quizzes, vocabulary games, and interactive Close Reading Experiences. Teachers can adjust the workload to best fit their classroom goals, while students complete content based on their own choices and interests.

To view all Zinc programs and activities, click "Assign Activities" in the top menu. Each of these activities can be assigned to entire classes, groups of students, or individual students.

Each activity offers different options. Below are summaries of each activity and a link to their feature help article. If you’re currently logged into Zinc, you can also click “Assign Now” to go right to the activity’s assignment page.

You can preview every Zinc activity as if you were a student. Just click the “Try this as a student” link under each activity in the Zinc menu. Activities requiring a Zinc Level will allow you to quickly experience a Level Placement and set the Level of your choice. If you’d like to read more about the options for each preview, you can click on the activity below to reach their feature help article.

Like teachers, administrators can view a complete list of assignments they've created by clicking “View Classes & Reports” in the top menu and then clicking “Assigned Activities.” Here is a direct link to the Assigned Activities page.

The list shows the activity, the assignment type (how it was assigned), who it was assigned to and when, student progress, and any notes you included. The column on the far right allows you to view reports. If an assignment can be canceled, you may do so here. You also have an option here to edit your notes for the assignment.

This list offers options to sort and narrow down your search. To view assignments for a specific class, click the “All Active Classes” dropdown menu and select the class you would like to view. You may also click the “Assignment Type” dropdown menu to select a specific type of activity.

If you’d like to cancel an assignment, please click “View Classes & Reports” in the top menu and then click “Assigned Activities.” If you’re currently logged into Zinc, click here for a direct link to the Assigned Activities page. This list can be sorted by classes and assignment type.

​If an assignment can be canceled, you can then click on the "🛇" symbol beneath that assignment's "View Report." Clicking the symbol will make a confirmation appear. Clicking "End Assignment" will remove the assignment from any student dashboards.

Please note, Level Placements may not be canceled. Do not worry, because Zinc treats all Level Placements the same, and students may only receive one Level Placement at a time. Students are limited to taking 3 to 4 Level Placements each school year.
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We understand the importance of tracking student success. Zinc provides all the reports you need to track usage and effectiveness of the platform.

Zinc’s teacher reports help teachers track Zinc assignments, reading skills, and reading growth of their classes and individual students. School and district administrators have access to these same student and class reports. School reports are accessible to school and district admin, and district admin may view district reports.

To reach the Reports page, click “View Classes & Reports” in the top menu on your Zinc homepage and then click “Reports.”

For more information about student and class reports, please refer to teacher reports in a separate article. See below for more information about school reports and districts reports.

School administrators and district administrators have access to school-level reports. School reports include your Student Performance Report, Reading Skills Report, Teacher Usage Reports, and Student Usage Reports.

With the School Level Student Performance Report, you can see the student usage and performance in specific Zinc assignment features for each teacher. You can click on the tabs for each type of assignment, and clicking on a teacher's name will take you to details about the usage and performance for each of their classes. After clicking on a class, you can click on a student's name to show you their individual use and performance.

With the School Level Reading Skills Reports, you can view a class-by-class breakdown of how students are performing on article quiz questions mapped to state standards or Zinc skills. Encourage your teachers to assign Lift Off to their students, and this page will quickly populate with data about student performance on their independent reading levels.

Tip: Use the Date Range to hone in on the beginning weeks of a grading period, then compare those percentages to the ending weeks of a grading period to see growth.

With your School Level Teacher Usage Report, you can see teacher usage at your school at a glance. You can quickly check how many teachers have logged in over the last 30 days and the last 6 months, and you can narrow down usage by adjust the date range.

The School Level Student Usage Report displays each teacher's student usage at your school broken down by Zinc activity. A handy graph makes it simple to recognize patterns of usage over time. Click any teacher to bring up an overview of Zinc usage in each of their classes.

District-level reports are only visible to district administrators. District reports include your district-level Student Performance Reports, Teacher Usage Reports, and Student Usage Reports.

With your District Level Student Performance Report, you can see student usage and performance by school. Click a school to bring up usage and performance by class. Clicking on a class allows you to view student-by-student engagement.

The District Level Teacher Usage Report displays teacher usage at your district, which you can break down by activity. You can quickly view how many teachers in your district have logged in within the last 30 days, and you can click any school to see engagement data for individual classes.

Your District Level Student Usage Report shows how many students are engaging with Zinc at each school, which you can narrow down for each activity. Clicking on any school will bring up each class's student usage.

We hope that you've found the information you need. If you have any other questions, please contact Zinc Support by clicking the blue chat bubble inside Zinc or by using the contact form.