​Last year I wrote about the greatest educational tool Microsoft has ever created; Reading Progress. The tool was in its early stages, and I approached it as an overview of the program. Today’s post is going to focus on how to use it in your classroom.

For those of you who don’t want to go back and read my previous post on Reading Progress​, here is a quick refresher Reading Progress is a free tool built into MS Teams and is designed to support fluency instruction for students. Students read a selected passage into a camera and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) scores their reading.​

How to Create a Reading Progress Assignment

The steps for this are straightforward. Start with going into your Microsoft Team for your classroom.

1. Create an Assignment: Fill in the normal information you need for an assignment.
2. Select Attach, then select Reading Progress from the list.
   • You can choose to use a Word document or a PDF from your personal library or you can select a free article from the sample library provided by Readworks.
3. Fill in the information for Reading Level, Genre, Number of Attempts, Pronunciation Sensitivity, and turn on Reading Coach.
4. Extra options include the ability to change the language.
5. Enter any additional instructions, points and due date.

Scoring and Returning Student Work

Now that you have created and assigned a passage for students to complete, you’ll need to be able to access it. The program uses A.I. to do the scoring, but you always can go back and listen to the student read the passage. This way you can confirm the A.I. score and if there is a mistake, you can adjust the score. Like all A.I. tools, the more it’s used, the better it gets. If you decide not to turn on Autoscoring, then follow these directions.

1. Find the Assignment in your Team.
   •  Assignments are sorted by To Return and Returned
2. Select Returned and choose a student who has completed the assignment.
3. Select Play on the students recording to listen.
4. Mark and categorize student errors by selecting any word they misread. Choose an error type from the dropdown menu.

If you decide to use Auto-detect and it’s turned on, you will see the score.  Press play and adjust any of the A.I. scored items. The same is true with reports, once you’re done reviewing the assignment, you can share as much or as little with your students as you’d like.

Help & Training with Reading Progress

If interested, sign up for training from Microsoft through this link: Support reading fluency practice with Reading Progress – Training | Microsoft Learn This 1-hour, self-paced module will teach you all the ins and outs of Reading Progress. Plus, you get points afterwards!

So, are you going to try using this tool? Let us know in the comments below!