Your Session Agenda
When a session starts, the Session Agenda tab is what you land on. It’s the plan for the session: who’s doing which assessment, who’s on the lesson, and what materials you have to hand.
Reading the Agenda
The agenda groups students by what they’re working on rather than listing them one by one. Each block shows the students on the left and what they’re doing on the right.
Students on an assessment appear in a block per assessment, with the assessment’s name and a short tag showing whether it’s a Pre, Mid, or Post assessment. A Preview link opens it in the Library in a new tab so you can see what students will be asked.
Some assessments carry a Tutor Administered tag. That means you read the questions aloud and record the answers rather than students working through it themselves.
Students on the lesson appear in their own block with the lesson name and its materials listed underneath. Most materials open in a new tab for you to read from, and what you get depends on the lesson, so expect things like the lesson plan or teaching slides.
Reading passages are the exception. Those carry their own launch button, because a passage goes onto the students’ screens rather than just yours. See Launching Assessments and Activities.
Icebreakers show up instead of a lesson when that’s what the session is for.
The Suggested Next Step
When a session has a lesson on it, the agenda card also names a suggested next activity, labeled Suggested next step. Spark picks it from where the group left off last time, using the student who got furthest.
It’s a suggestion, not an instruction, and the same activity comes pre-selected for you in the Activities tab. Change it whenever your read of the group says otherwise. Spark never launches anything on its own - see Launching Assessments and Activities.
Tabs Across the Top
Session Agenda is always first. After it you get one tab per assessment, each named for the assessment, and an Activities tab if the lesson has activities. If there are more tabs than fit, a More control holds the rest.
The agenda tab tells you the plan. The other tabs are where you actually launch things and watch progress. See Launching Assessments and Activities.
The Plan Is Wrong
If the agenda doesn’t match what you need to teach, Need to Make Changes to the Above? at the bottom reopens the Assign Lesson form so you can change it without leaving the session. See Assigning a Lesson to an Upcoming Session.
Tools
If your program has them, a Tools button opens extras you can launch alongside the lesson:
- Games - launch a game for your students.
- Scaffolded Reader - open a guided reading passage with definitions and translation.
Not every program has both, and if neither is available the Tools button doesn’t appear.