Lauren Caslen

Instructional Screencast Outline/Script

SchoolCity Suite
The purpose of this professional development is to show users the basic
features of creating a short, five question checkup quiz for fourth grade
students using SchoolCity Suite. This user friendly program is utilized by
schools to create higher-level thinking questions with easy access to the
standards that make up these assessments and questions needed to
determine students’ growth and success. My goal is to, hopefully, provide
teachers with insight for a way to use this great new program for assessing
students with an engaging formative assessment.

Task Analysis:
1. Open Internet browser
2. Type https://suite.schoolcity.com/prod10/sc/long in the address bar and press enter
3. Type in username and password
4. Click on the “Create Assessments” Tab
5. Click “Itembank”
6. Click “My Assessment”
7. Type the assessment name in the “Assessment Name” box
8. Select the subject
9. Select the Student Selection
10. Click “Save” and then “Next”
11. Select Main Standards for assessment
12. Select grade level
13. Select sub-standards
14. Click “Save” and then “Next”
15. Check the questions you want in your assessment
16. Click “Save” and then “Next”
17. If you would like to view the preview of the assessment, click the preview button at the top of
the page
18. Click “Save and then “Next”
19. Click “Skip Performance Level”
20. Click “Save” and then “Next”
21. Setup the time you want the window to be open for test
22. Leave everything else as is
23. Click “Save” and then “Publish”
24. Click “No thank you, I’m done”
25. Click “Assessments”
Lauren Caslen

26. Click “Lauchpad” to take you back to the homepage

27. Click “Reports”
28. Click “Predefined Reports”
29. Click Logout

Script:
Step #: On Screen: Narration:
1 Title Slide with soft Today we’re going to learn how to use a
program called SchoolCity. It’s a program
background music that is utilized by school systems in order to
provide formative assessments for
students. This user friendly program allows
teachers to create higher-level thinking
questions with easy access to the
standards that make up these assessments
and questions needed to determine growth
and success. Sound good? Let’s get
started.
2 First, you’ll open your web browser of choice
and type in the following address
https://suite.schoolcity.com/prod10/sc/long in
the address bar and press enter.

3 Once the homepage comes up, a username and

password is required in order to move on. Once
your district purchases the software for the
program, they will give each staff member his
or her own individual login information. At this
point, I will log in with my information in order
to move forward with the tutorial.
Click on the “Create Assessments” tab from the
homepage. This will give you several options to
4 choose from. You are going to choose the
“Itembank” tab because this will allow you to start
from scratch with creating your assessment.
5 This step is where you choose where you’re
going to store your assessment, the name for
your assessment, the subject, and when
students are going to take the assessment. For
this particular tutorial, I’m going to store my
quiz under “My Assessments” so only I can
access it. However, under normal
circumstances, I would normally check the
“School Assessment” tab so the quiz could be
shared with my co-workers.
6 Next you will give your assessment a name.
Since I am creating a practice quiz, I am going
Lauren Caslen

to name my assessment Review Quiz.

7 Once you’ve named your quiz, you will choose
your subject. For the purpose of this training,
I’ve chosen ELA. Next, select whether you are
scheduling all students to take the assessment
at the same time, scheduling students by grade
level, etc. Once you’ve made your selections on
this page, click “Save” and then “Next”.
8. On the next page, you will select all the
standards on which the students will be tested.
As you can see here, every single Language Arts
Standard is listed. If you had chosen Math as
your subject, the Math Standards would be
listed, Science, the Science standards, and so
on.
9. When you click on a specific standard, for
example, Reading: Informational, every grade
level will pop up. You will then click on the
grade level for which you are creating the
assessment (in my case, I’m going to click grade
4). As soon as you do this, every RI standard is
going to appear to the right. (The item number
in green tells you how many questions there
are for each particular standard. For example, if
you look at the first standard for RI1, it tells you
there are 215 questions for inferencing.)
10 For this review quiz, I’m going to select RI2, and
focus on Main Idea. Once you’ve selected all of
the standards for your assessment, once again
click “Save” and then “Next”.

11. The next page is where you actually choose the

questions for your assessment. There are
several features at the top of the page that can
help you narrow down your questions,
however, for this type of quick assessment,
those features aren’t necessary. Just to show
you an example, if you look a the boxes that
are checked right here that say “items used,
not used, and passages used and not used”,
this will eliminate any passages or questions
that have been used in any other test given at
all during the school year so your students do
not see it twice.
Lauren Caslen

12. Another quick feature to point out is right here

where it shows you the number of items versus
passages. This particular itembank has 95
passges with 172 questions.

13. One last thing to notice before I begin adding

questions to my assessment is over here to the
far left of the screen. If you look at the standard
listed in black, there is a ZERO beside it in red.
Once I begin adding questions, that number will
change based on the number of questions I
add. This is important to pay attention to as
you continue adding questions because you
don’t want to add too many of one particular
standard if you have more than one.
14. So, I’m going to begin adding questions to my
quiz. The default is set to just show you the
questions and not the passages. So in order to
see both, you will need to click on the
“passages” tab at the top right here. This will
show you the passages and every question it
has with it.
15. Since the standard is already narrowed down
for me, it’s easy, and all I’ve got to do is find a
passage to my liking. If you notice right here, it
tells you the first passage, “A Berry Healthy
Drink”, has a total of 3 questions for the
standard that I chose, but there are also 10
questions for other 4th grade ELA standards if I
am interested in those. Let’s scroll down and
keep looking.
16. So I think the second passage, A Camping How
to for Kids, is pretty neat. I like the fact that it
has a diagram of the camping equipment and
explains things in detail in the passage for the
kids. So I’m going to choose this one. All I have
to do is check the box where it says “Item
Name” right here and it automatically inserts it
into my quiz. I want all three of these questions
in my quiz, so I’m going to do the same thing
for the next two questions in this passage.
17. By the way, if you notice the standard I
mentioned earlier that had a red zero next to it
now has a green 3 since I have added 3
questions to my assessment.
Lauren Caslen

18. I’m going to scroll down and continue looking

for the last 2 questions for the quiz. The
passage, Across Open Space, has two questions
that I like and think will fit in with the type of
review quiz I’m putting together for my
students. So, again, I’m going to check the box
next to “Item Name” next to those two
questions and it will automatically insert them
into my quiz.
19. Now that I have my 5 questions, I’m going to
click “Save” and then “Next”.
20. This page is an overview of your assessment.
From left to right, it tells you the number of the
item, the standard, the item name/ID (which is
automated by the program), the correct
answer of the question, how many points each
question is worth (which again is automated by
the program), the passage name, the difficulty
level, and the DOK level of each question.
21. Towards the top of the page, you will see a
button that says, “Online Preview”. If you click
on this, it will show you exactly what the
students will see. The “Test Booklet” button,
will give you an option to print a copy of the
assessment for your records. The summary
button takes you to another page that you can
print and it gives you a lot more detail. It gives
you the question, the answer, and the rationale
for which the answer was chosen.
22. The next page does not serve any purpose for
this training, so we will continue by clicking the
green “Skip Performance Level” Tab at the top
of the page”.

23. The last page is the setup page where you will
create your administration window – meaning
you can determine the dates your students will
be able to login and take the assessment. Since
this is just a practice quiz, I’m going to leave
everything to its default settings for now, which
most of these items stay the same anyway.
Click “Save” and then “Publish”.
Lauren Caslen

24. Once you click the Publsh button, this screen

will pop up asking if you wish you be taken to
“Advanced Settings” or “If You’re Done”.
Unfortunately, because it is summer time and I
do not have any classes set up, it will not allow
me to go to the advanced settings, so for the
purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to click the
blue “No thank you, I’m Done” tab. Under
normal circumstances during the school year, I
would click the green tab to go to the Advanced
Settings because this is where I would input my
students’ accommodations, such as extended
time, read aloud, screen magnifyer, etc.
25. On this screen you can see your final published
assessment, the start and end dates, and the
status. You have now completed creating your
assessment.
26. If you click the Assessments Tab at the top of
the page, and then the Launchpad tab, it will
take you back to your homepage where you
can assign it to your students once your class is
created.

27. One last thing I want to mention is once the

students take the assessments, there is this
handy dandy reports folder over here to the
right of your screen. If you click on this tab. It
will bring you to several kinds of data reports
based on the assessment your students just
took.
28. If you click “Predefined reports”, it will give you
an option to take you straight to your test
results which then breaks it down into each
standard and even tells you which standard the
student mastered and did not master. The
feedback cards are for you to printout and send
home to the parents explaining the same
information as the test results.
29. SchoolCity Homepage That’s about all there is for a basic tutorial of
creating a SchoolCity assessment. SchoolCity,
with like most apps and software programs will
Soft Background Music become more familiar to you the more you use
it. I hope this was helpful to you and provided
you with insight for a way to use a great new
program for assessing your students with an
engaging formative assessment.