Getting started with Reading Progress in Teams
Applies ToMicrosoft Teams for Education

Reading Progress is a free tool built into Microsoft Teams designed to support and track reading fluency in your class. Students record their reading on camera and submit it to you. As you mark and return their work, data is automatically collected and organized in Insights, helping you spend more time with students and less time analyzing data. 

Create a Reading Progress assignment

Support independent reading practice with Reading Progress assignments in Teams. 

  1. Navigate to the desired class, then select Assignments.

  2. Select Create>Assignment.

  3. Enter a title for this assignment – this is required.

  4. Select Attach. Then select Reading Progress from the dropdown menu.

  5. To select a passage for your students:

  • Choose Upload Word or PDF to use your own files, including files from Class Notebook, your Teams files, or OneDrive.  

  • Select Browse sample library to use passages provided by ReadWorks.

assignments

reading progress

6. (Optional) Complete the additional fields to create more data sorting opportunities when reviewing student work.

  • Reading level: Identify reading levels in the way that works best for your class. Any reading level you enter will be searchable in Insights.

  • Genre: Select Fiction or Non-fiction.

  • Number of Attempts: Choose Unlimited to allow students plenty of opportunities to practice, or select any number to limit attempts.

  • Pronunciation sensitivity: Specify how strict you'd like Auto-detect to be when listening and estimating errors. Choose Less sensitive to leave more flexibility for pronunciation, and More sensitive to demand more exact reading performance. This setting is adjustable when reviewing student work. 

    Note: Pronunciation detection for each language is generalized based on common pronunciation and may not recognize accents and dialects well. This is just a starting point, and we are working to ensure those with accents and dialects are included. Use your discretion to mark errors manually when the speech detection does not meet the needs of your student.

  • Comprehension: defaults to Off when you create a Reading Progress assignment. Toggle Comprehension to On from here if desired. 

  • Require video: Select No to give students the choice to submit audio only.

  • Reading Coach defaults to On when you create a Reading Progress assignment. Toggle Reading Coach to Off from here if desired. 

  • Edit your passage: If you've uploaded a Word or PDF document of your own, you can edit the passage right in Reading Progress. Select Edit, then make any changes you'd like in the document.

    • Select Edit language to adjust the language Auto-detect will listen for.

    • Select the checkmark when you're done editing.

Note: ReadWorks passages are not editable. Passage details like title, reading level and genre will populate automatically.

  • Student View: Select student view to trial the student experience.

7. Select Next. 

reading progress

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8. (Optional) Edit additional aspects of your assignment by adding Instructions, changing the Points or extending the Date due

9.  Select which student's you'd like to have complete this assignment, then select Assign.

Your students will be notified of their new assignment, and it will appear in your assignments list.​​​​​​

  ​​​ instructions

Review and Return student work in Reading Progress

Collect valuable data while you review and return student Reading Progress assignments. 

  1. Navigate to the desired class, then select the Assignments tab at the top of the page.

  2. Under Upcoming select the assignment you're ready to review.

  3. Assignments are sorted by To return and Returned.

  4. In Returned, select a student who has turned in their assignment. Their recording and the text they were assigned will open in your grading panel.

  5. Press Play on your student's recording to hear them read the passage.

  6. Mark and categorize student errors by selecting any word they misread. Use the dropdown menu to mark words as correct or categorize an error. Reading Progress will collect and tabulate the errors in the Accuracy rate and Correct words per minute cards at the top of the review panel. Error types include: - Omission: a word in the passage that the student skipped. - Insertion: a word not written in the passage that a student added. - Mispronunciation: a word that wasn't pronounced clearly or correctly. - Repetition: a word that a student reads more than once.  - Self-correction: when a student reads incorrectly, recognizes their mistake, and reads again correctly.

  7. If the student has added additional words, you can insert them in the body of text. 

    • Select the word closest to where you would like to insert text.

    • Choose Edit text from the dropdown menu.

    • Select where you would like to insert text, then type in what you heard the student say.

  8. To view the words the student practiced with Reading Coach, select Practiced words.

  • Attempts shows how many times the student practiced, with stars to indicate how well they performed.

  • Tools used indicates where students used tools to help them practice and which tools they used.

9.   Decide what you would like students to see in their report. 

  • Select Edit next to Return full report to student

  • Choose Full report to include the student's Correct words per minute and Accuracy rate, as well as their marked errors, or Simplified report to return just the color-coded mistakes. 

  • Select Custom report to select for yourself exactly which datapoints you'd like your students to see then select Save.

  • Decide if you'd like this change to apply to future assignments or select Just this once.

  • Select Save.

10.  Enter written feedback and points for the assignment, then select Return.

11.  Press the arrows next to your student's name to quickly navigate to the next student.​

Note: You can also select Return for Revision to ask students to try the assignment again.

progress

Screenshot of the review pane of Reading Progress, Screenshot of the dropdown that categorizes errors, you can mark errors as correct, omission, insertion, mispronunciation, repetition, or self-correction.

Two options for reports for students are shown, the full report includes specific numerical details on the student's performance, the simplified report shows only which words in the text the student missed.

visualization of how well the student performed on each practiced word and what tools they used to practice. For example, a green star for the word atmosphere and a picture icon to show that they used picture dictionary for support

Use Auto-detect to save time

Estimate student errors to save time. Auto-detect evaluates student recordings to identify likely mispronunciations and other reading errors for educators. Educators can always adjust the errors to reflect student performance.

  1. Toggle Auto-detect to On. Estimated errors will appear already marked and categorized on the passage and in the overview cards.

  2. Press Play on the student's recording to hear them read the passage.

  3. Select any word you want to adjust. You can recategorize errors, mark additional mistakes, or choose Mark as correct as needed. The collected data will retabulate as you make adjustments.

  4. To go directly to any word, select it in the passage and choose Jump to word from the drop-down menu. 

  5. If Auto-detect isn't interpreting your student well, try adjusting Pronunciation sensitivity to change how carefully Auto-detect is when listening and estimating errors. 

Screenshot of review pane of reading progress. Several words in the passage are highlighted in teal pink and orange indicating an error category, collected data is visible above the passage Sreenshot of review pane of reading progress showing how to insert words to the right or left of a selected word

Keyboard shortcuts for quick reviewing

Once you've selected any word in the text, you can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the reading and categorize errors.

1.  Move from word to word with the Left and Right arrow keys.

2. Use Ctrl+> to jump to the next error word. The video will begin playing again from that point. 

3. Use the Space bar to play and pause the video as needed.

4.  When you encounter a word you'd like to adjust, press Down or Enter to open the error menu.

  • Continue pressing Down until your desired error type is outlined with a black box.

3.  Select Enter to mark the error; the dashboard will recalculate as you mark errors and the dropdown will close.

  • To close the dropdown without marking an error, select the Up arrow key.

text marked with errors, the word chameleons is encased in a black sqaure indicating that keyboard shortcuts are being used, a dropdown menu shows self-correction being selected from the available types of errors.  

Learn More

Pair Reading Progress assignments with Reading Coach

View Reading Progress data in Insights

Educator's guide to Insights in Microsoft Teams

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