• Overview of Checking and Setting Progress
• Step 4 - Review and Comment on Essay
• The Essay Toolbar

Step 1 - Selecting the Student and Assignment List to Check

Step 2 - Reviewing the Progress Report

Step 3 - View Essay

Step 4 - Review and Comment on Essay

Step 5 - Score Essay

Hint - Since you can't use colored ink to separate your writing from the student's you may want to place your comments below the student's or make them distinctive with brackets, [] or {}.

  1. Click inside the large white box that fills most of the screen, placing the text cursor (tall thin black bar) in an appropriate place.

       •   If you placed the cursor at the end of the student's text, then tapping the [Enter] key three times will triple space your comment from the student's work.

  2. Type in your comments.

       •   When you have finished your comments you'll need to save them so that the student can read them later.

  3. Click on Save, found on the toolbar.

       •   The screen will redraw itself, but there is no on screen message.

  4. Click on the Exit command on the toolbar.

Sound - On the toolbar at the top of the screen there is a picture of a speaker. You click on it to turn sound "On" and "Off". In the example above, sound is turned on.

Go Back - Click on Go Back when you want to see the page before this one. If you are on the first page of the Mastery test, clicking Go Back will open a dialog box and ask if you want to exit the test.

Go Forward - When you are done with this page you can click on Go Forward to see the next page. If you are on the last page when you click on Go Forward, a message box will open that asks if you want to exit the test.

Listen - Some lessons have sounds or say things out loud. Click on the "Listen" ear when you want to hear the words or sounds again. It appears in white if there are sounds to play and grey if there are none.

Save - Only found on the Essay toolbar, this button saves the student's answers and your comments.

Help - Found in the upper-right on the toolbar, you clicked on it to get to this help window. The help pages are designed to support first time users across a broad range of ages.

Exit - Also in the upper-right on the toolbar, this command lets you quit from the A+LS lesson the correct way. Exit takes you to the Select an activity screen. There you click on Log Off and you will return the Log On Screen where you can safely close your browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari, etc.).

Hint - If you move to a page that is all white, it is probably just a minor Internet problem.

  1. Point your cursor to the middle of the white area, then right click the mouse (Macintosh single button mice use [Control] click).

       •   A pop-up menu will open.

  2. Select Back from the pop-up menu.

This will take you back to the previous page. Now you can redo what you were trying when you got the white page.

WARNING: Never choose Refresh or on Windows computers tap the [F5] key, they will log you off of the A+LS system.