Recently Added Literably Features Follow
The following updates have recently been made to the Literably teacher and student experience.
August 2024 Updates:
Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year!
1. Rudy's New Look
Literably's friendly mascot Rudy the Dog has a new look! He is now more dynamic and engaging for students, and you can meet him if your school uses Phonics, Phonological Awareness, RAN, Spelling, of Vocabulary:
2. Teacher-Administered Phonological Awareness Assessments
To support our youngest users, Literably now offers the ability for teachers to administer the Phonological Awareness assessment one-on-one with students, with teacher-delivered directions and teacher grading. This gives educators the flexibility to support younger students, while still getting the benefit of assessment data being digitized and accessible in Literably. Learn about this feature here.
3. Teacher Regrading for Phonological Awareness and Phonics
Teachers now have the ability to manually regrade Phonological Awareness and Phonics assessments in Literably. This allows teachers to support students who may have speech differences or other considerations that affect how their oral responses are graded in Literably. See directions for using this feature here.
May 2024 Updates:
1. Literably Decodable Texts
Literably has released a library of decodable fluency texts, available to customers using Literably's Oral Reading Fluency assessment. More details are available here.
2. Enhanced Accessibility Features
Students can now take Literably's foundational skills assessments (Phonics, Phonological Awareness, Spelling, RAN, Vocabulary) on the iPad Safari browser, in addition to the Literably app. Students taking assessments on the iPad can now view assessments in both landscape and portrait modes, and the student experience is also accessible from the mobile Safari app on the iPhone.
April 2024 Updates:
1. Enhanced Comprehension Data Exports
Comprehension assessment results can now be downloaded at the district and school levels, by navigating to the Comprehension Tracker section of the "Reports" tab:
From there, click on "Export" and select your desired scope:
March 2024 Updates:
1. Enhanced Sorting Options
Teachers can now sort Fluency results by the reassessment recommendation or estimated instructional level using the icons at the top of the dashboard:
2. "Assigned By" Info on Student Detail Pages
Teachers can now see who assigned past assessments to students. This information is displayed under the "Assigned By" column on the student detail page, which can be viewed by clicking on students' names from the teacher dashboard. Under this column, initials indicate the teacher who assigned the assessment, and a Rudy the Dog logo indicates that the assessment was assigned automatically by Literably:
3. Enhanced SFTP Nightly Data Exports
For districts/schools that have opted to receive nightly data exports via SFTP, Literably now exports data for every assessment type. Instead of the old "export.csv" file, the files will be divided into "Oral Reading Fluency," "Phonics," etc., depending on the assessments used by your district/school. These files will appear in your district's SFTP directory with the following formats:
Winter 2024 Updates:
1. Teacher Dashboard Enhancements
Now, when teachers assign a new assessment, they can simultaneously view that student's assessment history in the same window:
2. Flexibility in Fluency Leveling System
In response to the research on the Science of Reading, Literably has introduced an option that brings a new level of flexibility to your Literably experience. You can now view students' levels as grade-levels and move away from the A-Z level system. This shift in the leveling system requires a decision at the school level (for school customers) or district level (for district customers).
Literably will continue to support the current A-Z leveling system for any district that prefers to continue using that system. Please contact your Customer Success Manager if you would like to learn more.
Teachers who have turned on the grade-level option will be able to switch between the grade-level system and the A-Z system using the toggle at the top of their dashboard:
3. Keyboard Compatibility for Spelling Assessment
The Literably Spelling assessment can now be completed using the physical keyboard on the device, in addition to the onscreen keyboard. This allows students who are accustomed to their device keyboards to enter their responses more easily.
4. Expanded Library of Premade Screeners
Districts and schools that have access to non-fluency assessments in Literably now have access to 3 premade screeners at each grade level, as described below:
| Assessment Category | Grade Levels | Number of Forms Per Grade |
| Phonological Awareness | K-5 | 3 |
| Phonics | K-5 | 3 |
| Spelling | 1-5 | 3 |
| Vocabulary | K-5 | 3 |
| Comprehension | 2-5 | 3 |
The three forms contain different questions but are designed to be equivalent in difficulty, allowing teachers to measure growth over the course of the school year.
To assign these premade screeners, select the "Pre-made assessments" option from the assignment window:
Then, choose the appropriate form from the dropdown list:
Fall 2023 Updates:
What's New for Teachers?
1. Assessment Panes: At the top of your dashboard, you will see the different types of assessments Literably offers. If your district or school has access to these assessments, clicking on these assessment panes will allow you to view your students' most recent results in that assessment category:
2. Student Detail Page: Clicking on a student's name from your dashboard takes you to a revamped assessment history, now called the Student Detail page. Clicking on the assessment panes from this page will display all of that student's historical assessments in that category:
Learn more about the Student Detail page here.
3. Saving multiple next assessments: If you district/school uses multiple assessment types or languages (i.e., more than only English Oral Reading Fluency), you now have the ability to save multiple next assessments from your teacher dashboard.
To assign each assessment type, navigate to the correct assessment pane and language, then use the pencil icon to assign and save the assessment:
Do the same for the other assessment types and languages you want to assign to your student:
After each assigned assessment is saved, you will be able to view the different selections by toggling among the assessment panes and between languages. Students will also be able to view a menu of assessments that have been assigned to them when they log in.
Please see the section below for how students can select from a menu of assessment options.
What's New for Students?
(Note: This new feature only applies to districts/schools that use multiple assessments types or languages. If your district/school only uses English Oral Reading Fluency, this section is not applicable.)
Student Choice Menu:
If students have been assigned multiple types of assessments in Literably, they will be presented with a menu of choices upon logging in. Students can toggle between English and Spanish assessment options. To begin an assessment, students should press the blue "Start" button next to the assessment.
English menu choices:
Spanish menu choices:
What's New for Administrators?
1. Admin Dashboard (including search bar): As an admin, you can view schools and teachers by clicking on the "Admin Dashboard" tab. You can add/remove admins by clicking on your email and going to "Manage Admins." More details here.
You can now search for teachers by name from your admin dashboard, when viewing a school-level teacher list:
2. Reports: Everything related to data exports and assessment windows can now be found under the "Reports" tab of your dashboard. Clicking on "Set windows" allows you to customize your assessment windows for completion reports. Under "Data Export," you can download data exports by assessment type, including filtering by language (English/Spanish), school, and teacher.
Winter 2023 Updates:
1. Enhanced Literably teacher dashboard
The Literably teacher dashboard has been updated to make it easier for teachers to find their data and set up students to assess. You can see a description of the changes and download a 1-page overview here.
More specifically, on the right side of your Literably dashboard, staff can now:
- Assign assessments, set student grades, and print results for groups of students (or all their students)
- View and change the assessment type, genre, and language for any of their students
- See if a teacher assigned their students' most recent assessment, instead of using Literably's recommended assessment
2. Teacher-built custom phonics and phonological awareness assessments now available
If your district or school is using phonics or phonological awareness as part of Literably's FS assessment, staff now have the option to select from over 300 individual FS skills to create a custom 5-20 question assessment, designed specifically for each of their students. See a video here.
With this in place, staff can:
- Have students take super quick assessments (5 minutes or less) on the skills they care most about
- Leverage the FS assessment more powerfully for progress monitoring, as well as general screening needs
- Create a nearly infinite number of unique assessments for any of their students
3. High Frequency Word Lists
Teachers now have access to high frequency word lists for kindergarten-level texts using the Word Frequency tool described here, which can be leveraged to look up the words that appear most frequently in Literably's A-D texts, as well as the texts that contain words with certain phonics features (such as the "sh" pattern, for example):
4. Updates to the Comprehension Tracker color-coding system.
The Comprehension Tracker is now color-coded according to a 4-color system (instead of 3 colors previously):
- Blue = 75-100%
- Green = 50-75%
- Orange = 25-50%
- Red = 0-25%
Fall 2022 Updates:
1. New Literably Teacher Dashboard
The Literably teacher dashboard now has a new look:
- The columns are wider, making the data easier to read.
- The reassess recommendation is indicated by a circular arrow (
) next to the student's name, rather than in its own column.
- The asterisk (*) that indicates an estimated instructional level is now displayed as a star.
- Teachers who have access to Literably in both English and Spanish can toggle results between the two languages from the dashboard.
2. Literably's Online Literacy Platform
In addition to the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) Assessment, Literably now offers a suite of assessments, in both English and Spanish:
Please note that RAN is currently in beta testing. For more information about adding additional assessment options to your Literably plan, please contact your customer success manager.
3. Literably Spotlight Emails
District and school admins in Literably now receive a monthly Literably Spotlight email that highlights data related to how many students have used Literably at your district or school, how many assessments have been submitted, and the number of instructional hours/days saved through Literably assessments:
4. Version 1.3.2 of the Literably iPad app was released on 9/1/2022.
Spring 2022 Updates:
1. Students can now assess on iPads using the Safari app.
In addition to using the Literably iPad app, students can now also take the oral reading fluency assessment using the Safari browser app:
After opening the Safari app, students can navigate to literably.com/login and log into their student account in the way that they typically would. They can then record their reading and complete the assessment in Safari.
This may be useful for districts/schools that are restricted from installing the Literably iPad app onto their devices.
2. TEKS Standards Alignment
Districts/schools using the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards now have the option of turning on TEKS correlations for Literably's multiple-choice comprehension questions. This will allow the comprehension tracker to display TEKS standards rather than the CCSS standards. For more information, please see section #2 here.
Winter 2022 Updates:
1. Changes to the "Start" Button
The "Start" button (to record) is no longer displayed on the student assessment interface once the student has done both of the following:
a) The student has completed a recording of their reading and did not receive a pop-up message saying the recording was too short or had a microphone issue. In other words, the student has completed a full recording.
b) The student has moved to the comprehension questions by clicking the "Comprehension" button after finishing their recording.
At this point, if the student returns to the text, they will see only the playback button:
This reduces potential confusion for the student and prevents them from re-recording their reading once they have already completed a full recording and moved on to the comprehension section of the assessment.
2. Enhancements to the Comprehension Tracker
Admin Access: When a district or school admin is viewing a specific teacher's dashboard, clicking on the purple waffle icon in the top-right corner of the dashboard will allow the admin to view the comprehension tracker for that teacher's class.
Directions:
a) Click on a teacher's name at the bottom of your admin dashboard:
b) Click on the "purple waffle" icon:
c) You will then see a summary of comprehension data for all students in that class:
This feature allows admins to spot trends in comprehension data by classroom, in the same way that teachers are able to do from their own dashboards.
Assessment history page: Teachers can now also the comprehension tracker for their entire class by clicking on the "View Class Comprehension Report" link in the comprehension section of the Assessment History page.
Fall 2021 Updates:
Version 1.2.6 of the Literably iPad app was released on 11/29/2021.
Version 1.2.5 of the Literably iPad app was released on 10/12/2021.
Version 1.2.4 of the Literably iPad app was released on 8/16/2021 and supports auto-rotation to align with attached keyboards.
- This feature works with texts at levels A-P, not Q-Z (which display in portrait mode).
- Once a student logs into Literably, the screen will auto-rotate until the student presses the "Start" button to record.
- After the student begins recording, the screen will no longer auto-rotate for the remainder of the assessment, in order to minimize distractions.
Spring 2021 Updates:
May 24, 2021: Version 1.2.3 of the Literably iPad app is now available in the App Store. This version pushes out the changes described in 1 & 2 below in the iPad app.
1. Assessments will not be graded if a student does not complete all 5 multiple-choice (MC) comprehension questions.
If a student does not complete all 5 multiple-choice comprehension questions, Literably will label the assessment with the tag "Incomplete Comprehension," rather than grading the assessment and offering only the accuracy score and running record portion of the assessment. This prevents teachers from receiving graded assessments with 0/5 or partial comprehension scores due to students not completing this section or accidentally skipping questions, which can be a misleading representation of how the student performed.
When viewing your students' scores on their assessment history page (see screenshot below):
- A 0/5 comprehension score indicates that the student answered all 5 multiple choice comprehension questions, but answered 0 questions correctly.
- The words "Incomplete Comprehension" next to the assessment indicates that the student left 1 or more multiple-choice comprehension responses blank, and Literably thus did not grade the assessment.
2. "Next" button now required in the comprehension section.
In the comprehension section of the student assessment, a "Next" button (which looks like a "forward" arrow) will not appear until students select an answer to the multiple-choice question (this prevents students from accidentally skipping questions):
Selecting an answer will no longer move students immediately to the next question. Instead, selecting an answer will make the Next button appear, and students can then click on the button to move to the next question: