Reviewing student Portfolio submissions in Imagine Language & Literacy

Administrators and Teachers can use the Portfolio report to review audio recordings and written responses from students' activities in Imagine Language & Literacy. There are 11 activity types that save work to the Portfolio, categorized into 2 main types—Recording and Writing. 

  • Recording: The Fluent Reader and Read and Record activities allow you to review and evaluate a student's Oral Reading Fluency as they read books or articles aloud. Various other recording activities provide opportunities for students to practice authentic speech in the form of phrases or chants.
  • Writing: Written responses help assess a student's vocabulary and reading comprehension skills

As part of the review process, you can assign Booster Bits to reward students for their work. You can choose to grade and review the submissions student-by-student or activity-by-activity. 

The report clearly distinguishes between the new submissions awaiting review and the submissions you've already evaluated. 

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We recommend checking this report at least once a week, and sharing examples of student work and growth with families during parent-teacher conferences.

To review student Portfolio work and award Booster Bits:

  1. Log in to Imagine Language & Literacy
  2. Select the applicable group at the bottom of your Home page.
  3. In the group-level dashboard, view the Portfolio section on the right side of the screen.
    • If you have new (unreviewed) entries, the number displays with a yellow highlight.
    • Underneath the New Artifacts link, the total number of submissions (new and reviewed combined) displays for This week (starting Sunday), This year (starting at the beginning of the school year), and Lifetime (this school year and in the past). Portfolio entries from the current school year and the previous school year will be available.

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  4. Click the arrow in the Portfolio section to access the Portfolio report. 
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  5. The Portfolio report opens on the Needs review tab, which displays all unevaluated submissions for the selected group. A submission is considered new and will continue to appear on this tab until you award Booster Bits.

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    As desired, make alternate selections in the drop-down menus for Group, Activity, and Time; click Apply to activate your new selections. 
    The defaults selections in the drop-down menus are:

    • Group - the group or class whose data you are currently viewing
    • Activity - Overview (page with tabs for all activities awaiting review and all previously-reviewed activities)
    • Time - Last 7 Days

     Note

    In the Activity menu, any activities types without submissions will be grayed out.

     Tip

    If you get the "no work" message, try changing the Time filter to School Year to see the most artifacts, especially if you need to catch up on your grading.
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  6. In the left-hand column, the report defaults to display All students in the class you are viewing. However, if you prefer to review artifacts on a student-by-student basis, click on a student's name to access a list of that student's work. This can be especially useful in parent-teacher conferences. 
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  7. The Needs review tab has 2 tables:
    • Needs review: These are the auto-scored Fluent Reader activities, both "cold" and "contextualized", where students read aloud for 1 minute. You must review the auto-generated scores and award Booster Bits. (Awarding Booster Bits is not part of the automatic scoring process.)
    • Unscored: These are all activity types except the Fluent Reader activities. They are not auto-scored, and you must award Booster Bits after reviewing.portfolio - two tabs.jpg
  8. There is a row for each of the 11 activities that generate Portfolio entries, provided you have at least one student submission for that activity.
    The columns in the tables of the Needs review tab are defined below. You can click on the arrows in the column headers to change the sort order.

    Column Definition
    Activity The name of the activity and its corresponding thumbnail.
    Skill details A summary of the activity and/or a description of the skills students must demonstrate.
    Type Writing or Recording. There are 8 recording activities and 3 writing activities.
    Last submission The most recent date that a student submitted work of this activity type.
    To review or To grade The number of submissions awaiting your review. The Needs review table contains only Fluent Reader activities, which have been auto-scored.
    The Unscored table contains the 10 other non-auto-scored activities that you must evaluate.
    Action needed In both tables, you must award Booster Bits in order for the submission to move to the Reviewed tab of the report. In the Needs review table, the action button is labeled Review. In the Unscored table, the button is called Grade. Both buttons take you to the student submissions.
  9. If desired, click the arrows or use the Expand all/Collapse all links to change how much detail displays. Expanding allows you to see the number and name of each dataset for that activity type.  
    comic talk expanded.jpg

    Click Review or Grade to begin reviewing portfolio artifacts.
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    The individual datasets open, which are specific instances of that activity type (Comic Talk, in this example). The title of each dataset displays along with the number of student submissions for each one (in a blue circle to the right of its title). Click the down arrow to expand each dataset separately or the Expand all link to expand all datasets at once. 
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    Student work will now display.
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     Note

    Some activities contain a Download teacher resources link, which provides the book, article, or activity in a printable format. You can refer to the document to be sure the student has answered the writing prompt correctly (in writing activities) or to follow along with what they're reading aloud (in recording activities).
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    Review the artifacts according to type, Recording or Writing. Click on the corresponding line below to learn more about each type.

    Reviewing Recording Submissions

    There are 8 different recording activities that generate Portfolio entries.

    • Some activities, such as Be a Recording Artist, only have one audio file per student, per dataset:
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    • The Read and Record activity generates an audio file for each page in the book the student is asked to read. 
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      Click View Submissions to open the list of files. They open in ascending order but you can change that if desired.
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    • In the Fluent Reader activities, the auto-scored results from the Fluent Reader+ feature display in the Accuracy section. The Words correct divided by the Words read equals the Accuracy score, displayed as a percentage along a color-coded line. The line is red when students score under 70%, yellow when students score between 70 and 79%, and green when they score 80% or higher.  

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    • Click the Play button to listen to the audio. 
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       Tip

      To adjust the playback speed, click the more options menu.
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    Reviewing Writing Submissions

    Submissions in the student's Portfolio show the writing prompt the student was given and the student's written response. There are 3 writing activities that generate student Portfolio entries:

    • In Application Station and Write it Out with Lexi activities, students are asked to respond to a comprehension question about a book or article they read. 
      Application Station example:
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      Write it Out with Lexi example:

      write it out.jpg

    • In Vocrab Island activities, students are asked to use specific words in a sentence.
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    Based on the your evaluation of the student's work and effort, click 0, 20, 60, or 100 to begin awarding Booster Bits. Select 0 to acknowledge review of student work without awarding Booster Bits.

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    Then click Confirm in the pop-up window. 
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    You'll receive a confirmation message at the top of the page. 
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     Note

    You can skip having to confirm each selection separately by checking the Don't show this confirmation for the rest of this session box, which will appear the first time you assign Booster Bits and the first time you mark an item as reviewed without assigning Booster Bits. This will save time if you are reviewing several portfolio submissions in one sitting. You won't be asked to confirm each type of action again until you close or reload your tab.
    IL&L mark as reviewed portfolio.jpg.

     Recommendations

    • To ensure the audio recordings are high quality, encourage students to speak slowly and enunciate. Provide a quiet place for recordings. Some students may feel more comfortable recording in a private corner of the room rather than at their desk. You can even make an inexpensive  "recording studio" with easy-to-find materials.   
    • You can award Booster Bits to student assignments based on effort, improvement, growth, accuracy, and/or how well the student followed instructions. For audio recordings, consider factors like speed, missed words, pronunciation, and expression. For writing samples, consider punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors, if the student answered the question in full, and the extent to which the student used their own words.
    • If you would like your student to redo an activity, create a Playlist that includes the activity. The first recording will still be kept.
  10. Evaluated student work is now visible in the Reviewed tab of the Portfolio report. Use the arrows and the Expand all/Collapse all links to change the level of detail that is displayed, and the View button to access student work.
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  11. Students are notified of teacher-awarded Booster Bits the next time they log in and see the Booster Bit reward screen during a student session. 

Portfolio FAQs

How do Portfolio activities get assigned to students?
There are 2 ways Portfolio activities can get assigned to students:
1. Via their automated personalized learning path. Each time a student completes one of the 11 activities that are saved to the Portfolio, their work automatically displays in the Portfolio report for you to evaluate. 2. Via educator assignment of Portfolio datasets in a playlist. If you intentionally assign students a Fluent Reader activity or any of the other 10 activity types that generate Portfolio submissions, completed student work shows up in the Portfolio report.
The Portfolio report does not specify whether a particular submission came from a personalized learning path or from a playlist. 
Do students have to "submit" their work to the Portfolio?
No, there are no special buttons a student must click to send their work to the Portfolio. 
Who can see the Portfolio submissions?
The Portfolio report is viewable by class/group, so all Teachers assigned to the class or group can see it. Administrators can see the Portfolio for all classes in their purview without having to be specifically assigned to the class. 
Can I delete a portfolio artifact?
Yes, you can. The artifact will be deleted from your view as well as from the view of any other educators who were able to see it. To delete an artifact, click the more options menu on the far right, then click Delete
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Confirm your decision by clicking Delete submission. This action can't be undone.
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Can I reassign an activity if I want a student to redo it?
You can't reassign an item directly from the Portfolio report, but you can reassign an item by creating a playlist from the Activity Explorer and adding the item to the playlist. As you review student work, make a note of the dataset title the student worked on so you can search for it in the Activity Explorer. 
How long does student Portfolio work remain available for educators?
Imagine Learning deletes student Portfolio entries on a rolling basis. We keep submissions for the current school year and the previous school year. Submissions created earlier than last school year are deleted. For example, in the 2025–26 school year, you can view work from the 2025–26 and the 2024–25 school years.
How soon after a student completes a Portfolio activity should it appear in the Portfolio report?
It should appear immediately after it is completed.