FAQs: Lessons and activities in Imagine Language & Literacy

The number of activities in each lesson varies widely, with up to about 20 activities in the longest lessons. However, most lessons average 6 to 8 activities.

The length of each activity ranges from 1 to 6 minutes. The activities average about 2 minutes in Grades K–1 and 3 minutes in Grades 2 and up.
Since both the number of activities in each lesson as well as each lesson's length vary, it's difficult to state an average lesson length, but each lesson could easily take 30 minutes to more than an hour.

Imagine Language & Literacy's "Smart Sequencer" will add or skip activities into students' assignments based on:

• The grade-level content of the activity
• Whether or not the student is an English Language Learner (ELL)
• The student's first language support
• If the student has already completed certain other activities
• How well the student performed on certain skills
• Device compatibility—although students using the web always have the latest version of the program, students on Chromebooks or other devices may be given an alternate version of an activity (or skip an activity) if their device can't support it.

Typically, a longer lesson can have 4 or 5 remediation activities interspersed throughout the lesson. Not all lessons have remediation, but the following lessons do:

Curriculum Area = Oral Vocabulary

• Basic Vocabulary
• Conversation (Lessons 1-16 only)

Curriculum Area = Literacy

• Letter Recognition for Older Students
• Letter Recognition for Younger Students
• Word Recognition & Reading

Some remediation activities are inserted immediately after a student demonstrates need of them. These activities focus on direct instruction of key skills or concepts. Other times, remediation activities are inserted at the end of the lesson to provide extra practice.

When students have been assigned remediation, the Progress by Lesson report shows a rewind symbol in the In Remediation column. 

Yes. You can preview individual activities via the Activity Explorer.
You can preview the activities grouped within each lesson in the Lesson Explorer.

The Progress by Lesson report shows you the lessons each student is working on in the three Curriculum Areas of Literacy, Oral Vocabulary, and Grammar. Students may work in multiple areas simultaneously and also may have more than one lesson in progress simultaneously within the same area.
You will not be able to see precisely what is coming up next and in what order as the order is not strictly linear. The backend sequencer places students in a Curriculum Area based either on how long it's been since they've worked in a particular area or which area is currently the least complete. 

No. You can add additional activities by creating a Playlist, but you cannot disable activities or lessons for your students.

The program will re-assign some activities to a student if they are in remediation. It's usually activities the student struggles with or the program needs data to confirm whether or not a student is proficient in a certain skill. In these cases, students may see the same activities more than once and this is considered normal.  If your student is not in remediation, then they are most likely not repeating the exact same activity, but it may feel that way to the student. For example, if your student has completed all the available Oral Vocabulary and Grammar content and all they have left is the Literacy content, that content may seem repetitive when it is actually just similar.

You can view the activities your student is working on via the Lesson Explorer. First, find the lesson they are currently on by checking the Progress by Lesson report. From this report, click in to the Lesson Group to be taken to a list of the digital activities. You can see from the thumbnail imagines in the screenshot below that student can be given the same activity with different datasets. This means that the gameplay is the same but the set of questions/targeted skill is different.


Furthermore, the student may complete different activities related to the same book. For example, in the Read on My Own activity, students read the book silently to themselves. In the Read and Record activity, students record themselves reading the same book out loud.

In some cases, session times end slightly before or after the prescribed time. Student sessions are automatically terminated when: 

• A student is within 3 minutes of the ending of a prescribed session time and is on the loading screen between activities. 
• A student is working on an activity and they are 6 minutes over the prescribed session time. 
• One exception is the Application Station activity, which is a writing activity. Students may take up to 15 minutes to compose their response, regardless of how much time is left in their session when they start. After 15 minutes, their writing will be saved and sent to the teacher, and students will be logged out. 

When students are unable to move to the next activity, try these troubleshooting tips: 

• When the student has selected an answer, the usual next step is that students must click the checkmark to submit their answer and move to the next question. Be sure they clicked the button; it will be lit up and may also be pulsing. 
  
• When moving from one activity to the next activity, students must click the "Let's Go" button at the bottom of the screen. Be sure they clicked the button; it will be enabled. Sometimes it also flashes. 
  
• Sit with your student and listen to the instructions with them. You can replay the last instruction by clicking the rewind button. This is especially vital in the Context Clues activity, which intentionally gives only audio instructions in order to avoid giving away the answers. 
  

Changing a student's grade level to a higher or lower grade may lock or unlock different grade-level content strands. However, we recommend that you use playlists to assign harder or easier content to your students instead. One disadvantage of increasing a student's grade inside the Product Portal is that less content will be available for the student to complete in future academic years.
Another consideration is the type of rostering your district uses. Changing a student's rostered grade is much easier when using manual rostering. If you use automated rostering (i.e., Clever or Classlink), you will be unable to change the student's grade level using the Imagine Learning rostering tools. You'd have to change the student's grade in the information you send to Imagine Learning via your sync.