A playlist is a customized set of activities that Teachers and Administrators can create and assign to one or more students for extra practice or intervention. While most educators use playlists to provide targeted instruction and reinforcement to students who have not yet demonstrated proficiency in a specific skill or academic standard, they can also be created based on student interests or to challenge students with more difficult material if you feel they are ready for it.
You can only create playlists for students in groups to which you are assigned, and playlists can contain a maximum of 12 activities.
There are 2 places to create playlists in Imagine Language & Literacy—via the Action Areas Tool or via the Activity Explorer. The differences between each starting point are defined below.
| Location | Description |
|---|---|
| Action Areas Tool | Provides recommended activities to students who demonstrate a need for them. You create the list of activities and assign students to them right from the Action Areas Tool. |
| Activity Explorer | From within the Activity Explorer, you select from all of the available digital activities to create a truly custom set of activities in the playlist. You then visit My Playlists to assign students to the playlist as a separate step. |
Once you assign a playlist, you can't edit the playlist or change the activities in it.
Student experience in playlists
When students are assigned a playlist, it overrides their learning sequence. They will begin working on the playlist immediately, provided they aren't in the middle of an activity or a Benchmark assessment. If students do have work in progress, they'll finish that activity or assessment first and then be given the playlist activities. The transition is seamless and students will not be aware that they are completing a playlist instead of their sequential learning path activities unless you tell them.
After students complete the last activity in a playlist, they return to their normal activity sequence.
Students can be assigned to 1 playlist at a time. If a student is assigned to a playlist and you assign them to a second playlist, they will immediately begin working on the second playlist—regardless of how much work they did in the first playlist.
Caution
- If are an Administrator, you must be assigned to a group before you can create playlists for students in that group. The playlist option in the Activity Explorer will not be available if you don't have any groups assigned to you.
- Once you add students to a playlist, you can't add or remove activities or reorder the activities in the playlist.
- Scoring data for Playlist activities must be viewed in the Playlist report.
- When the school's data is reset at the end of the school year, students are unassigned from the playlists. However, the playlists themselves are kept as long as the teacher accounts are not deleted. This ensures that teachers can assign the group of activities to their new students in the upcoming year.
Click on a tab below to learn how to create a playlist from that starting location.
To create a playlist from the Action Areas Tool:
- Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy.
- If you have more than 1 group, select a group.
- Click Action Areas in the upper navigation bar.
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Use the filters to find students who need extra practice activities. Refer to Using the Action Areas Tool to provide intervention for details on the different views available in the Action Areas Tool. You can filter by students, skills, or standards.
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Click Open Intervention Tools.
- The digital activities related to the skill or standard display; use the checkboxes to select 1 or more activities to add to the playlist. You can add 12 or fewer activities to a playlist.
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Click the Select Students drop-down list to choose the students to whom you wish to assign the activities. You can select all students from the list or individual students.
Notes
If you see the Curriculum icon (
), this means that the student has completed all of the available curriculum for this skill (including remediation), but still needs additional support.
Thisicon means that the student is already assigned to a playlist. However, you can switch the student from their previous playlist to the new playlist you are now creating.
- Type a name for your playlist in the Name Playlist field.
- Click Create & Assign Playlist.
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If a student has already been assigned a playlist, you'll see this warning. Click Cancel if you don't want to move students to the new playlist. Otherwise, click Move Students to switch students to the new playlist.
- After you assign a playlist to students, you'll see this confirmation message.
Click the playlist name in the confirmation message to see your newly created playlist.
To create a playlist from the Activity Explorer:
- Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy.
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Select My Playlists from the Activity Explorer drop-down menu.
- Click New Playlist.
- Type a name for your playlist, then click Save.
- Click on the name of your new playlist from the My Playlists list to add activities to it.
- Click Add Activities.
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Find the activities that you want to add to your playlist using the search box or by clicking different skill area tiles.
Note
You can't assign activities from the Academic Vocabulary, Decodable Words, and Reading Vocabulary skill areas to a playlist. You can access them from Lesson Explorer within the Teacher Resources.
- Click the applicable tile to view the activities available for that topic.
- Click the + sign and then choose your new playlist from the list of playlists. Repeat this step for each activity that you want to add. You can add up to 12 activities to a playlist.
Caution
The activities in the Phonological Awareness > Initial Phonemes page (Discover Similar Sounds and Meet New Sounds) will not work if your student does not have a required support language enabled in their student account. Adding these activities to a playlist for students without the needed language support will result in a negative student experience—the student will be unable to move past the lesson. For the student to continue working in the program, the teacher who assigned the student to the playlist must remove the student from the playlist, or an Imagine Learning Product Support representative must move the student through the content.
- Receive a confirmation message that the activity was added to the playlist.
- When you are ready to assign your playlist to students, follow these instructions. The playlist will be automatically delivered to students once they complete any activity or Benchmark assessment that may currently be in progress. If no prior work is in progress, students will begin the playlist activities immediately.