See our student resource article for accessing lesson assignments, teacher-paced mode, navigating through sections, marking questions for later review, and checking your scores.

Student notes allow you to open a persistent, private notes window directly alongside any lesson. This means you don't need to switch contexts (e.g., jump to a separate app or piece of paper) while engaging with the material. You can capture spontaneous thoughts, define vocabulary, or create summary points immediately as you work through the assignment. These notes will remain for your eyes only.

The notes whiteboard can be styled, and you can add hyperlinks and other content items such as images, files, videos, etc. as well.
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Note: Student notes will be available only if your teacher selected to make them available to you. If you're not seeing the Student notes feature in your lesson, please ask your teacher if they can enable it.

If your teacher enabled Text to Speech on a lesson, you will see the icon on the right side Learning Tools menu. Click the icon to enable the reader and to reveal the control bar, then click on the text itself to start the reader. You can adjust the speed of the reader, pause/unpause, and stop the reader from the control bar. To close the reader simply click on the X.

You can use the Line Reader tool to guide yourself through a reading passage, isolate a single question, or steady your focus on long-form or passage text immediately as you engage with the material.

Click the Focus Tools icon on the right side Learning Tools menu, then toggle on the Line Reader button to enable the tool. Proceed to click on a specific line within a text passage, a question or an instructions field and a gold highlight bar will appear over that line. You can then proceed to click, drag, use arrow keys (Up/Down step lines, Left/Right switch panes), or Escape to dismiss.

If your teacher enabled Color Contrast on a lesson, you will see the Color Contrast Tool icon on the right side Learning Tools menu. You can use the Color Contrast tool to toggle between standard and high-contrast color themes while taking assignment and completing lessons.

Once you've made your selection, it will be saved and persist across all lessons and assignments you take, until you change it to a different one.

Click the Color Contrast tool icon on the Learning Tools menu, then check mark either standard or high contrast to your preference.

Click the X at the top right corner or the tool icon again to close the menu.

If your teacher enabled the Accents Keyboard on a lesson, you will see it displayed on every question it is supported on (Short Answer, Free Response, and Fill-In-The-Blank questions). At this time the Accents Keyboard is available in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Mandarin.

Simply expand the keyboard and click an accent button to add it to your response. For uppercase accents hold down the Shift button on your keyboard and then click the desired accent button.

You can use the Highlighter tool to mark text within a question's instructions field or within a Text Block or a Paired Passages item provided by your teacher. Simply select the text section with your mouse or touchpad, then click on the highlighter color of your choice from the 4 options offered. The text you selected will immediately be highlighted.

Basic question types you are probably familiar with include:

Select only one correct answer.

Eliminate incorrect answers using our strikethrough feature.

Please note: the strikethrough will remain only while you are working on the question. If you navigate out of the lesson and return to it later, your strikethrough markings will not appear.

Select multiple correct answers.

Eliminate incorrect answers using our strikethrough feature.

Please note: the strikethrough will remain only while you are working on the question. If you navigate out of the lesson and return to it later, your strikethrough markings will not appear.

Select one correct answer between True or False.

Type your response into the text field.

Type your response in the form of an essay. Use the Styling and Hyperlinking menu bar to style your response, and add attachments by clicking the little plus button within the text field. If your teacher enabled the feature, you can also view your word count. Your teacher may have also added a "Show Your Work" box to this question, or even added a grading rubric that you can view.

Your teacher will provide a prompt and then have items on the left side that need to be placed into categories on the right side.

You can either drag the item from the left side to the category on the right, or you can click on the 6 dots to the left of the item, then click on the blue plus sign under the category!

To change categories, just tap the "x" to remove the answer and send it back to the left side. Your teacher can create answers that don't fit in a category, or there may be more than one for each category, or an unused category!

Your teacher will present either text or an image with empty spaces, called "drop areas" to which you can drag and drop an answer. Answer choices will appear below the prompt.

The answer choices can also be text or images and they need to be moved into the correct drop areas.

You can drag the answer to the drop area by clicking and holding, then releasing onto the right spot, or you can click once on the answer to select it and then click once on the drop area where it should go.

If you want to remove your answer, just tap the "X" next to where you placed it in the prompt! It will return to the answer section and you are free to select it again and move it into any available space.

Note: Your teacher may provide more answer choices than drop areas or vice versa!

What if your drag and drop answer choices aren't "sticking" where you put them?

You may be on a slow network or have other software using up your bandwidth. Try this:

This type of question will have a prompt from your teacher and a number of options. Click and hold on the dots icon to the left of the answer you want to select, then drag it where it belongs in the order.

Matching questions will prompt you to drag and re-organize the tabs on the left column to match to the tabs on the right column. Click and hold the dots icon to the left of the tab you want to select, then drag it where it belongs.

You may have seen this question type on surveys or worksheets before. There will be rows and columns with radio buttons or checkboxes. Depending on your teacher's setting of this question, you may be able to select only one answer in each row, or multiple answers.

If the table contains circle radio buttons - you will need to select one choice from the radio buttons. You can only pick one in each row.

If the table contains square checkboxes - you will be able to select multiple choices in each row. You will also be able to deselect your choices.

Your teacher will set up a prompt that has one or more drop-down menus. Click on the dropdown and select the answer from the list. If you need to change your answer, just click and select something else.

Your teacher will set up a prompt that has one or more blank fields for you to fill out manually. Click inside the blank field to fill in your response. If your teacher intended for the answer to be a math equation or symbol, the in-app math keyboard will pop-up for you as soon as your click into the blank field. Otherwise, the answer will be text base and you will use your device's keyboard to enter it.

For a Hot Spot question, your teacher will upload a picture or document and place clickable spots on it. Answer the prompt by clicking on a spot and a checkmark will appear. Once you've selected a spot, you can remove the checkmark by clicking again or you can leave it and continue the assignment.

The clickable areas can be dots, circles, squares, or rectangles. In the example below there are different shape and size clickable areas on 14 states and one Great Lake. In this example, the prompt is "Select Nebraska!" and the teacher has set this question to limit students to choosing only one answer, so clicking on a different state changes the location of the checkmark.

Your teacher may set up the question with multiple selection available, in which case you will have the option to checkmark more than one "spot".

Hot Text is similar! Your teacher will provide a prompt and there will be text box below. Anything selectable will be highlighted in blue and will become a darker shade of blue when you hover over it with your cursor. To select elements from the text as your answers to the prompt simply click on your selection(s). When selected, the word or phrase will have a rectangular border around it. Need to deselect it? Just click it again and the border will disappear.

You may have a prompt requesting that you upload a file. This can be a PDF or other document, an image, or a video. You can upload from your device or from Google Drive.

In this example, the question has a rubric, which is linked from the left side under the question number!

(Please note that after clicking "Upload File," you will be prompted to allow access to your device and then an explorer window will open to navigate to the file's location)

You might be prompted to record audio for a question. For audio recording to work, you must have a microphone (such as the built-in one on your laptop) and you have to allow Threads & Themes to use it to record responses.

If this is your first time recording audio, there will be a prompt on your browser asking you to allow Formative to record sound and use your microphone. Select yes.

What if the audio isn't recording and you don't hear anything on playback?

You may need to enable the microphone in two places: Your device (laptop, tablet, phone, or computer) and your browser (Chrome or Safari). (Also double check that your speakers are set up when playing back recordings!)

Video recording works a lot like audio recording! Your teacher will provide a prompt and you'll have the option to record video using your device's camera, upload an existing video, or record your screen as you do work on your computer.

Record using your camera and microphone:

You have to allow Threads & Themes to access the device's camera (and microphone, if needed). You may have to allow access twice: Once for your browser and once for the device.

To upload a previously recorded video file, select "Upload a File." Give Threads & Themes permission to access files on your device, then the explorer window will pop up, allowing you to navigate to your file and select it.

Supported file types for video recordings are mp4, mov, webm, 3gpp, 3gpp2, flv, wmv, and mpeg. Videos must be 10 minutes or less.

Any time a Drawing question or the "Show Your Work" box comes up, your teacher is asking you to write, draw, type, highlight, measure, or otherwise show the work you've done on a whiteboard to answer the question.

To get started answering using a whiteboard, click on the "Show Your Work" button wherever you see it on a lesson.

Once you are in the drawing / show your work box, you can read the question and click the down arrow icon to minimize it. This will give you more room to answer.

Your teacher may have an image, graph, or worksheet as the background for the whiteboard, or it could be blank.

You can use tools like lines or scribbles, shapes, writing text, and more!