When you are ready to deliver a Threads & Themes lesson to your students, the assignment process gives you complete control over how your class interacts with the material. You can choose to guide them step-by-step or let them work independently at their own speed.

The Assign Process

To get started, open the lesson you want to deliver and click the Assign button located at the top of the editor page.

1. Select a Class

From the Assign menu, check the box next to the class (or multiple classes) you want to deliver the lesson to.

If your class isn't rostered in the Threads & Themes platform yet, select 'Add class' at the bottom of the Assign menu to create and roster a new class.

Click here to learn more about creating classes.

2. Choose Your Pacing

Next to each check-marked class, you will see two pacing options:

Teacher paced: Guide students through the lesson together.
Student paced: Allow students to progress through the lesson independently.

Note: Because Threads & Themes lessons are expertly designed for guided classroom instruction, assignments will always default to Teacher paced mode.

If you prefer to assign as Student paced mode, select the option before moving on to the next steps.

3. Adjust Assign Settings

Before finalizing the assignment, you can customize the experience for your students. Settings can be adjusted for both Teacher paced and Student paced modes. Available settings are organized into clear categories:

Grading and Feedback: Decide when students see their scores (e.g., instantly, after submitting, or when closed), limit how many times students can use the "Check Answer" feature, and determine when correct answers are revealed.
Content Display: Select the type of display students will be presented with, and which learning tools will be available to them. (Note: Pacing type is available in Teacher paced mode only)
Student Management: Manage testing accommodations, randomize the order of questions, or set specific access controls.

(More details on Assignment Settings can be found here)

4. Finalize Assignment

Once your settings are configured, click the Assign button at the bottom of the menu to deliver the lesson!

⚙️ Assign Settings

Different test environments require different settings. At times you may want to allow your students the option to edit their assignments after submission while at other times you'll prefer to keep them from having that option. You might want to allow them multiple attempts on the same activity. You may decide returning scores and correct answers instantly or only after submission, or you might like to present your students with one item from the activity at a time. All of these are just a few of the optional, additional assign settings available.

The different Assign Settings are organized into convenient categories. Expand the sections below to learn more about the available settings within each category:

The After Submission settings allow you to decide if students can edit their responses after submitting (useful for Free Response questions or just to keep learning happening), and whether or not students can still see an activity on their dashboard after they submit.
Clicking the carrot next to this setting will allow you to choose one of the following options from a dropdown menu:

Time Management

Schedule open/close times

Schedule your assignment to open and close on designated days and at designated times.

Checkmark the box next to Schedule open/closed times
Select the date and time you would like your activity to open and/or close (this can be adjusted at any time)

Your activity will remain as a draft assignment until the scheduled open time, at which point it will become accessible to students.

Note: If you've enabled Multiple Attempts on an assignment, once Close time arrives the assignment will close for all students, regardless of the amount of attempts they managed to complete by that time.

Schedule a due date

Teachers can schedule a due date on an assignment for each class. This setting will present a notification for the students when they are expected to submit their work, and they will also see a clear notification once the activity is past due.

On your end, if a student submitted their work past the due date, you will see an indication of it as well.

This setting is separate from the automatic Open/Close times, meaning: You could set a specific Due Date but set the automatic Close date a few days later, giving students a grace period to submit prior to the assignment closing automatically. Having the indication of a late submission on your end will allow you to act upon the late submission per your discretion.

Note: If you've enabled Multiple Attempts on an assignment, any attempt taken after the due date has passed will be marked as Late Submission.

To set a Due Date:

Checkmark the box next to Schedule a due date
Select the date and time from the calendar presented (this can be adjusted at any time)

Indication of late submissions will be displayed on the "Responses" tab, both with an icon next to the student name, and with a written message within the side-panel when expanding the student's submission. Hovering over the icon next to the student's name will provide you with the date and time the student opened the activity, the due date/time, and the the date and time the student submitted.

Set a time limit

Teachers can set a time limit on any assignment. This will limit the amount of time a student has to complete the activity, and will automatically submit when the time runs out. This can be particularly useful when conducting an assessment.

To set a Time Limit:

Checkmark the box next to Time Limit
Select a time from the drop-down menu, or set a custom time.

Your students will now have a time limit that will begin once they open the activity!

Note: Students in your class can be granted a Time Limit Extension accommodation on the individual assignment. See Student Management dropdown below.

Student view

Students will receive a warning screen before they begin the assignment, letting them know that there will be a time limit.

Once students click "Start," they will be able to track how much time they have left in the menu at the top of the activity.

Tip: You cannot add more time once a student's time has run out. However, you can always remove the time limit on an assignment by adjusting the time following the same steps above, or allowing them to make edits after submitting

However! If you enabled Multiple Attempts on the assignment the countdown timer will reset with each attempt the student takes!

🙋🏽 How can I reset the time limit for a student?

You can undo submission for students if there is a time limit set. When you undo submission, students will see the timer confirmation screen again, and the timer will restart for them. They will not lose any of their responses.

If you've enabled Multiple Attempts on the assignment, the countdown timer will reset automatically with each attempt the student takes.

🙋🏿‍♂️ Can I allow a student to retake a timed assignment?

Yes! If you've enabled Multiple Attempts on the activity, the countdown timer will reset with each attempt the student takes!

If you haven't enabled Multiple Attempts on the assignment you can remove the student's responses and unsubmit, students will see the timer confirmation screen again, and the timer will restart for them. Their old responses will be cleared, and they can retake the activity.

🙋🏼 How do I pause a assignment with a time limit?

You can pause a timed assignment for the entire class, or for individual students, from the "Responses" tab. Please see the section on pausing an assignment for step-by-step instructions!

🙋🏽 The timer ran out while my student was recording audio/video responses and they did not save

Since once the timer runs out the assignment automatically closes, any responses that are not fully added at that time will not be saved. This includes audio responses, video responses, or any other file uploads that have not yet finished to process and get added into the assignment. Best practice would be to instruct your student to pay attention to the timer countdown and submit what they were able to record/upload a few seconds prior to the timer running out. You could re-open the assignment (with an 'Allow edits' after submission setting) for the individual student after it closes to allow them to make changes and add any responses they didn't have time to complete.

Grading and Feedback

Total Attempts / Retakes (Student Paced only)

Enabling retakes on a Student Paced assignment. This setting sets a limit on the number of attempts a student can make.
Toggling on Keep correct answers (available when at least 2 attempts are enabled) will retain graded answers that are correct on the student's next attempt.
Notes:

Students can retake the assignment immediately after each submission, but only up to the maximum allowed attempts.
Only questions that are auto-graded or marked as correct prior to the next attempt launching will be retained and visible, when keeping correct answers is toggled on.
Once all attempts are used, students can review their previous submissions.
For record-keeping, each submission is documented on the Responses tab, but only the score from the latest attempt is reported. Teachers can manually adjust the score as needed.
For retakes to work as expected the following combination of Grading and Feedback settings is recommended:
- After Submission = "Keep Visible (No Edits Allowed)"
- Return Scores = "After Student Submits"
- Return Correct Answers = "When Closed" or "Don't Show Answers"
Any other combination of settings may not result in the expected behavior and students could run into issues taking advantage of the multiple attempts option.

After Submission

Allow Edits - Students will be able to edit and re-submit the activity as long as this setting is enabled or the activity is open.
- When you enable this setting, there is no limit to the number of edits a student can make.
- Answers that have been changed after grading are labeled with a red exclamation mark on the reporting page.
- Edits made by students will over-write and remove their previous responses, and scores will adjust accordingly when a question is auto-graded.
  If you want to allow retakes and retain students' submissions for all attempts, please use the Total Attempts setting instead.
Make Hidden - The content of the activity will not be accessible after the student submits. Students attempting to access the activity after submitting will receive notification that the activity has been hidden by the teacher.
When enabling "Make Hidden" you cannot set correct answers to return to students. You can only set scores to return.
Keep visible (no edits allowed) - Students will be able to view the content of the activity after they've submitted it, but they won't be able to edit it.
Teachers and students can still exchange feedback after the submission.

If you would like to return scores or correct answers to your students, you must choose "Keep visible" or "Allow edits" before you can adjust the settings for returning scores / correct answers.

Return Scores

You have many different options for returning scores to your students. Note that:

In order to return scores, you must select "Keep visible" or "Allow edits" in the After Submission setting first. If you do not do this, you will not be able to adjust the settings for scores or correct answers.
If you return scores, your students will be able to see which standards were tagged to a question as they take their assignment.

Clicking the dropdown next to Return Scores will allow you choose one of the following options:

Instantly - Scores will be returned to students as they are working to complete their work. If a question is auto-graded and does not require any keyboard entries (for example, multiple selection or multiple choice question types), students will have the option to reveal their score and check if their answer is correct as they are taking the assignment by clicking the button "Check Answer".

The system will record the amount of attempts made by the student and will display the number of attempts on the responses tiles on the teacher's end:

When returning scores is set to 'Instantly', teachers can also control how many times their students will be able to check their answers by defining "Total Check Answer Attempts" to either Unlimited, 1, 2 or 3 attempts.
When a specific amount of attempts is selected, after a student uses all available Check Answer attempts on a question, that answer becomes locked and changes are no longer allowed for that question.
When closed - Students will get their scores back when you close the assignment.
If you re-open the activity, students will be unable to see their scores until you close it again or choose another option.
After student submits - Students will get their scores back immediately after they submit, even if the activity is in progress for other students. If they've already submitted their assignment once, their scores will continue to display and will update as they edit responses, do a retake, or have a score changed by a teacher.

Note: You can always decide later and come back at any time to pick an option to return scores!

Return Correct Answers

Returning correct answers is very similar to returning scores. Similarly, note that:

In order to return correct answers, you must select "Keep visible" or "Allow edits" in the After Submission setting first. If you do not do this, you will not be able to adjust the settings for scores or correct answers.
If you return correct answers, your students will be able to see which standards were tagged to a question as they take their assignment, and to track their progress against standards in their "Standards" tab.

Clicking the carrot next to Return correct answers will allow you to choose from the following options:

Don't show answer - Students will not get the correct answers back at any point.
When closed - Students will get the correct answers back when you close the assignment. If you re-open it, they will be unable to see the correct answers until you close it again or choose another option.
After student submits - Students will get the correct answers back after they submit. If they've already submitted the assignment once, the correct answers will continue to display.

Note: You can always decide later and come back at any time to pick an option to return correct answers!

Content Display

Pacing

The Pacing setting is available when selecting Teacher-paced mode only. Teacher can select to pace the lesson by section, by item, or by question.

Learning Tools

Teachers can enable or disable students' access to learning tools on the specific assignment. Click the arrow next to Learning tools to reveal the available list.

Accents Keyboard

Accents Keyboard can be enabled on individual assignments for students to use when responding to Short Answer, Free Response, and Fill-In-The-Blank question types. This tool supports Spanish, German and French, Italian and Mandarin only.

Access Learning Tools
Select the desired Accents Keyboard from the dropdown

The student view:
When this setting is selected, the Accents Keyboard will appear on students' screens on Short Answer, Free Response and Fill-In-The-Blank question types. Students will expand the Accents Keyboard and click on the desired accents to add them to their responses. For uppercase accents, students will need to hold the Shift button and then click on the desired accent button.

Browser spell check

While Spell Check can be useful on some assessments, when assigning Spelling assessments it should be disabled. To accommodate for different needs, Threads & Themes offers a feature to Disable or Enable the Browser Spell Check Feature on specific assignments, without needing to disable the system browser's feature completely.

Disabling the spell check feature will prevent the red line indicator from appearing underneath the misspelled word.

***Note:

Spell Check, when enabled, will only be available when using Student accounts. Spell Check is not intended to work when using teacher accounts (i.e. the Preview environment)
Spell Check, when enabled, is not available when using the Free Response question.
The Spell Check setting in Formative applies to the browser spell check feature only. It can not affect 3rd party apps or extensions in the likes of Grammarly or Read&Write. If your students have such services installed on their devices, you will need to disable them at the source.

Disable / Enable Browser Spell Check on a Specific Activity

Access Learning Tools
Then, toggle the button next to Browser Spell Check ON if you want your students to be able to use the browser's Spell Check feature, or toggle it OFF if you want to prevent your students from using the browser's Spell Check feature.

Student notes

Access to Student Notes can be managed directly from the Learning Tools - making it easy to enable notes when reflection helps, or turn it off when focus matters most.

Disable / Enable Student Notes on a Specific Activity

Access Learning Tools
Then, toggle the button next to 'Student notes' ON if you want your students to be able to use the notes feature, or toggle it OFF if you want to prevent your students from using the notes feature.

Student Translator

When this tool is enabled, students will have the ability to translate *most content of the assignment into other languages, as they are defined on individual students' Translations Accommodation (see more on accommodations below). The translator supports more than 30 languages!

***Note:

Translator, when enabled, will only be available when using Student accounts. Translator is not intended to work when using teacher accounts (i.e. the Preview environment)
The Translator is not supported on feedback messages between students and teachers
The Translator will affect the following items:
- Website's native buttons/headings
- Text content typed into text fields by the teacher (i.e. questions, answer choices, text / paired passages, etc.)
The Translator does not support content items such as PDF, Images, Audio, Video, or embedded content.

Enable/Disable the Translator on a specific activity

Access Learning Tools
Toggle on the Student translator

Note: A Translations Accommodation MUST be set for individual students to gain access to the Translator tool. Please refer to the Accommodations article for step-by-step instructions.

The student view:

When this setting is selected, the Translator option will appear on the right-side bar when students open the assignment . Students will select the Translator icon and proceed to click on the 'Translate to [language]' button. The activity will be immediately translated. To return back to the original language of the activity, students will click on the 'Return to [language]' button (appearing in the translated language).
The Translator will be disabled when students exit the assignment. Students will need to re-activate the translation when re-accessing the assignment.

Student Management

Add Students

This setting allows you to add students to the class(es) you're assigning to without navigating away from the assigning process. This is a great solution if you realize that your class roster is out of date after you already started assigning.

Click the carat to the far right of Add Students
Use the Add student button to add / send a join invitation to a new student manually, or
Copy the join-link or the join-code to the class and provide it to your student so they could join your class independently, or
Click the Roster Sync button to import your class roster directly from Google Classroom, Clever, or Microsoft Teams Classroom

Assign to individual students (Paid Teacher/School & District license feature)

If you do not want to assign to your entire class, you can select which students will have access to it. This can be useful for re-takes, extra practice, to deter cheating, or any other reason you would like some students to take a different assignment from other classmates.

Click on the carat to the far right of Assign to Individual Students.
Checkmark the name(s) of the student (s) you'd like to assign your activity to.
Click Assign
- Tips:
  - You can always edit your selection by returning to your Assign Settings modal. You can check or uncheck individual students on or off as needed (Great if someone is absent!), just make sure to click on Update after making your changes
  - In the same fashion you can also remove the restriction of access for the rest of the class, by un-checking all students and clicking Update.
  - You can clone the lesson as many times as you need to, then edit the clones to make them differentiated for different groups. Then assign each clone to the relevant group!

Assign to Student Groups

If you already created performance based Student Groups in your class, you will be able to assign to one specific group (or more) by utilizing this setting.

Click the carat to the left of Assign to Student Groups
Expand the list of groups and check-mark the desired one(s)
Click Assign >> the activity will now be assigned only to the students within the selected group(s)
To change the selected assigned groups, click back into the assign settings window by repeating the steps above, check-mark additional group(s) to add them to the assignment or un-check group(s) to remove them from the assignment, and click Update to confirm

Accommodations (School & District license feature)

Click into this setting to enable or disable accommodations to students within your class for this specific assignment. Click the pen icon next to a student's name, and select the relevant accommodations for them.

Available accommodations:

Text to Speech
Time Limit Extension
Answer Choices Reduction
Translation
High Contrast
Masking

Click here to learn more about accommodations!

Class Management

Once a class has been assigned, the Class Management section will appear. From here, you can reverse and unassign the assignment from the class.

📖 Pacing Walkthroughs

(Click the sections below to expand the step-by-step walkthroughs for each pacing mode)

Delivering a Teacher Paced Lesson

Teacher Paced Mode allows you to guide students through a lesson so everyone stays on the same page. Students cannot move forward or look backward unless you allow them to.

Starting the Session

Once a class has been selected and you click assign, the lesson will launch immediately and you'll get redirected to the Teacher paced lobby. Students joining the lesson at this time will see a waiting lobby on their screens until you start pacing the lesson.

When you're ready to begin, click Start at the bottom of the control panel.

The Control Panel (Remote)

To help you teach, your session controls will open in a separate pop-out window. This allows you to project the main lesson on a classroom board while keeping the controls and live student responses private on your own device.

If you prefer everything on one screen, you can close the pop-out window to minimize the controls to a side-bar on your screen.
The option to move the control panel from your main device to a phone allows you to maintain control from the palm on your hand while moving around the classroom.

Controlling the Pace & Session Settings

If you haven't made a selection during the assignment workflow - select Session Settings, from the triple dots menu on your remote, to adjust the Pacing and decide how students progress through the material. You can advance students:

By section (The default for Threads & Themes lessons)
By item
By question

From here you can also adjust the Grading & Feedback settings, the Accents Keyboard, and the session's audio.

Broadcast View

Select View Broadcast from the triple dots menu at the top of your control panel to launch the student view in a new window. Once launched, you can display the broadcast view on a classroom board.

Progress the Lesson

Use the Next button at the bottom of your control panel to move your students to the next screen (question, item or section - depending on the pacing method you selected).

The dropdown menu at the top of the control panel will allow you to jump between the different screen out of order.

If pacing by sections - an additional progression bar will appear at the top of the control panel. This bar will show you the individual questions within the section, clicking each number will display the question's responses by students within your control panel. This view is not visible to students!

Reviewing Responses Live

As you present, you can monitor student comprehension. You can pull up individual question responses directly from your remote to see how the class is doing, without disrupting the lesson displayed on the classroom board.

Leaving & Re-joining a Session

If you accidentally close out of the session or need to pause instruction for the day, you can easily jump back in later. Two pathways to return to session:

Click the Assign button at the top, and click the Return to session button pinned next to the assigned class.
Navigate to the Responses tab of your lesson, click the icon next to the assigned class title and select Return to session from the dropdown menu.

Manual Grading & Sending Feedback

Questions with pre-set answer keys will be auto-graded, however if the assignment includes questions without a pre-set answer key, or Rubric graded questions - a manual grading will be needed.

Click the triple dots at the top of the control panel, and select View responses in a new tab to head over to the assignment's Responses tab, where you can manually grade responses and send feedback messages to your students.

Click here to learn more about viewing & scoring student responses!

Delivering a Student Paced Lesson

Student Paced Mode allows students to progress through the entire lesson independently. To preserve the natural reading flow of the texts, student-paced lessons are delivered as one continuous, scrolling page.

Monitoring Progress

Once the lesson is assigned in Student Paced mode, you can track student progress and grade work in real-time.

Click on the Responses tab at the top of the page.
You will see a grid displaying your students on the left and their answers as they work through the questions.
Click on any individual response in the grid to view their full answer, leave personalized feedback, or manually grade open-ended questions.

Click here to learn more on viewing and scoring student responses!

Pausing an Assignment

As long as the assignment is open, teachers can choose to pause the it for the entire class at the same time, regardless of students' progress. They can also unpause it when ready to allow students to resume their work where they left off.

If the assignment has a time limit set, pausing it will also pause the timer, once the assignment is unpaused the timer will resume. When an assignment has a time limit, teachers can also choose to pause it for individual students within the class.

Pausing an entire class

Pause an Un-Timed Assignment for the entire class

Go to the Responses tab
Click the green lightning bolt icon next to the class name
Choose Pause Assignment from the dropdown
The green lightning bolt icon will be replaced by the pause icon, and the students' assignments will be paused

Pause a Timed Assignment for the entire class

Go to the Responses tab
Click the icon of the timed green lightning bolt next to the class name
Choose Pause Assignment and Timer from the dropdown
The green lightning bolt icon will be replaced by the pause icon, and the students' assignments will be paused

When an assignment has been paused for the entire class, the symbol next to the class' name on your Responses tab will be that of the Pause icon:

Unpause (resume) a previously paused assignment for the entire class

Click the pause icon
Choose Resume assignment from the dropdown
The pause icon will be replaced by the green lightning bolt icon, and the students' assignments will be resumed

Pausing individual students

Pause a Timed Assignment for individual students

Note: Only students that are logged in to their accounts and have the assignment open can be individually paused. If a student does not have the assigment open, the option to pause / resume their individual assignment will be grayed out.

Go to the Responses tab
Click the name of the class to reveal the students list
Click the Pause icon next to a student's name to pause that student's assignment
The Pause icon will be replaced by a Resume icon

Unpause (resume) a previously paused Timed Assignment for an individual student

Go to the Responses tab
Click the name of the class to reveal the students list
Click the Resume icon next to a student's name to unpause that student's assignment
The Resume icon will be replaced by a Pause icon

Note: If an assignment has a pre-defined close time in its' assign settings, it will close at the designated close time even if it is paused.

Student View

From the student's perspective, when an assignment has been paused, they will no longer be able to view the assignment's content, and a message on the screen will let them know that their teacher initiated a pause.

Differentiating Pacing for Individual Students

While running a Teacher Paced session, you may have students who need to work ahead or go back to finish a previous section. You can easily differentiate pacing by releasing individual students to work at their own speed, without disrupting the rest of the class.

Releasing a Student to Student-Paced Mode

While in your live Teacher Paced session, look at your control panel (remote).
Open the list of students currently in the session, by clicking on the students list icon.
Click the Adjust pacing button at the top of the list
Find the name(s) of the student(s) you want to release and un-check the box next to their name to switch them to Student paced. The icon next to their name will change from the presentation icon to a lightning bolt icon signifying their new Student paced status.
Click Confirm at the top of the list to finalize the release.
That student(s) can now scroll freely through the entire lesson on their own device, while the rest of the class remains locked to your teacher-paced screen.
Need to pull students back from Student paced into Teacher paced?
Return to the list of students, check the box next to their name. The icon will change back from lightning bolt to the presentation icon signifying their new Teacher paced status. Click Confirm and the students will be pulled back into the Teacher paced experience, landing on the same screen the rest of the class is working on at that time.

Deliver Lessons & Assignments