Progress and portfolios

The four portfolios, what each one gathers, and how to read a trend.

A report shows one session. A portfolio shows a child over time. There are four, one per kind of work.

• Reading portfolio — accuracy, vocabulary growth, badges and every past reading.
• Spelling portfolio — practice cadence and word mastery for spelling sets.
• Word list portfolio — flash-card practice, card games, tests and write runs.
• Writing over time — how much your child has written, and every composition.

A Reader sees only their own, with no child picker. Parents, Family Managers and Teachers pick the child — except on Writing over time, which today shows the writing of whoever is signed in and has no picker at all.

The language picker

The reading, spelling and word list portfolios carry a Language picker at the top, starting on All languages. It narrows everything below it — the set and list pickers as well as the figures — so a family working in two languages can look at one of them at a time. A family reading in only one language never sees it.

Reading portfolio

Three cards at the top — Readings in view, Average accuracy and Best reading — with a View picker: By week covers the readings from the last 12 weeks, By month the last 12 months. The line under the cards says which window you are looking at.

Include echo reads is the switch that decides whether echo passes count. It is off by default, so practising with the app reading along does not flatter the figures, and it stays on an exported PDF so anyone reading the print-out knows which way it was set.

Reading vocabulary counts the characters and words your child has met and can be said to know — a character counts as known once enough of its recent readings were correct — with a growth chart. Echo readings never feed this one, whatever the switch above says.

Beside it, as a separate number, is words you recognise — the words your child picks out correctly in Do you remember?, with how many different words it has asked so far. A word counts once at least 5 of its 7 most recent answers were right, so a lucky tap or two does not count. It is never added to the characters your child can read: choosing a meaning from four options is easier than reading a word aloud, so the two are kept apart, each per language. Deleting a Do you remember? round, or moving it to another child, works the count out again.

Correctness by reading level breaks accuracy down by how hard the material was, so you can see whether a dip is a bad week or a harder book.

A Chinese book's level is named on Zen Reader's own nine-step ladder — First words, Early reader, Growing reader and so on up to Fluent reader — and reads like "Growing reader (3 of 9)". On a computer, hover over the level to see the HSK band behind it. An English book keeps its school grade.

Books read lists every reading with its date, level, word count and correctness. A recording that covered several pages appears as one row that expands into its pages, rather than counting as ten readings. Echo rows are labelled. Tap View, or double-tap the row, to open its reading report.

On a Chinese book the row also says how much of it your child has already met in spelling: "62% of the characters are on Mei's spelling lists" — counting the lists assigned to that child and the ones they have practised. A child with no spelling lists yet gets one line saying so, rather than a column of 0%.

Below that, under Achievements, are the badges — "3 of 5 earned", with the date each one was earned and the rest shown as Locked:

• First Book — completed a first reading.
• Perfect Read — scored 100% on a reading.
• High Flyer — scored 90% or more on a reading.
• Weekly Streak — read in three weeks in a row.
• Bookworm — finished five different books.

Echo reads and Oral Practice read-alouds do not earn badges. The names and descriptions follow the app's language, like everything else on the page.

Percentages and dates throughout the portfolios are written the way your device's language writes them — 90 % in German or French, a day-month or month-day date as your region expects — so a figure on screen may not look exactly like the examples here.

Spelling and word list portfolios

Both are driven by their pickers. The spelling one chooses a Spelling set and then a List inside it; the word list one chooses a Word list and then a Lesson.

• All sets or All lists → all-time totals, broken down by kind of practice.
• A set and one list or lesson → that one's practice chips, average, best and per-word results, including word mastery for that lesson.
• A set with all its lists → the average, the trend, a bar per list, and word mastery with the weakest first.

Marks read as "5 out of 10 correct · 50%" throughout, rather than a bare percentage, and the ⓘ Key button explains the faces and colours. Sets and word lists in the pickers are sorted by the number in their title, so 第二级 follows 第一级.

The spelling portfolio also shows how consistently the practice is being done — "4 of 6 lists fully practised" — and, for English sets, a Letter and number flips section naming the b/d/p/q/g and 3/5/6/9 shapes worth drilling. See Flip Fixers.

The word list portfolio covers five kinds of activity: Flash cards, Card game, Say test, Write practice and Write test. The two tests are counted as assessment and the other three as study, so a written test is never folded in with the practice that led up to it.

Do you remember? rounds are listed in the same activity log — "8 of 10 words remembered", and Stopped early on a round left half-way — but they are not a sixth kind in the totals and never move an average, the trend or word mastery: picking a word out of four is easier than saying or writing it. A round covers every lesson at once, so it is listed when the lesson picker is on All lessons. View opens its answers, and from there a parent can move it to another child or delete it.

Photos to add lists runs that were finished without a photograph. Each row names the list and lesson it belongs to, so it is clear which sheet is wanted. They show as photo not added yet rather than counting as nought, and tapping one attaches the sheet there and then.

Needs your review on the word list portfolio shows handwriting the marker was unsure about, with Looks right, Not right, a box and Save mark, and Open in report. Spelling works the same way but from the run's own report rather than the portfolio — see Spelling practice.

The school's own mark

Practice at home is only half the picture. When you have a list selected, the spelling portfolio shows a School test result card where you can record what the teacher actually gave — the marks, what they were out of, the date, and any notes worth keeping. It is plotted alongside the practice on the same dates, so you can see whether the practice is showing up in the test.

You can type the mark in, or let Zen Reader read it off the sheet: Photograph the sheet, Use the webcam or Choose photos or a PDF. It fills in the mark and, where it can, which words the teacher ticked and which they did not.

A test that runs over more than one page is no problem: up to six photos can be attached to one result, and every page of a PDF arrives as a photo. They show as a strip of thumbnails on the card — tap one to look at it, crop a photo before it is uploaded, or Remove photo to take one off. Read the photos again re-reads the lot, which is a button rather than something that happens by itself, because a re-read replaces whatever is in the boxes.

The card saves as you go. Once the marks and what they were out of make sense together, the result is stored a couple of seconds later and again when you leave the screen, so a result is no longer lost by forgetting to press Save result. A half-typed mark is treated as still being typed and never stored.

Reading a mark off a photograph sends it off the device, so it needs Settings → AI features turned on. Typing the mark in yourself never does, and works either way.

Only a Family Manager or Parent can record or change a school result. Readers see it.

Each list is plotted in a colour of its own, so a set with several lists reads as separate lines rather than one jumble. At All sets the plot widens to every set in view, a colour per set.

There is also an All readers option on the spelling portfolio's child picker — not the default, and for adults only — which draws every child on the one chart, a colour each, for when you want to compare siblings. Under it the session log names each row's reader, and the comments and school-result cards stand aside, since neither belongs to more than one child.

Writing over time

Reached from Writing over time at the top of the Composition screen rather than from the menu, and shaped differently from the other three on purpose. Like Composition itself it is a preview, so a family without Composition does not have it.

• A bar per week, or per month with the By month switch — how much your child wrote, not how well.
• A total: how many pieces have been checked, and how many characters or words in all.
• Every piece, with its title, date and length, and Open this piece to go back to one.
• Mistakes — wrong characters per 100 characters (or spelling mistakes per 100 words), over the pieces somebody asked Zen Reader to look at. With too little of that writing it says "Not enough checked writing yet to work this out" rather than showing a zero.
• What comes up most — the kinds of thing pointed out more than once, with a count.

What it deliberately does not have is a score or a grade — it reports countable facts, not a judgement. And only a piece whose transcript your child has confirmed counts towards a total or a bar; one that was photographed and never checked is still listed as Not checked yet so they can finish it, but its length is the machine's reading rather than an agreed fact. See Composition for how the mistakes are found.

There is no comments panel and no language picker here yet.

Listening and Oral Practice

Neither has a portfolio of its own. Each finished session has its own report instead, opened from its row in Family activity — and for Oral Practice, also from Past conversations on its own screen. See Listening and Oral Practice.

From version 1.305 the Reading portfolio also lists the selected child's Oral Practice conversations, under Oral Practice: Conversations with Jas about a book. Each has a View button that opens the conversation. The section only appears once the child has had a conversation. It is how a linked teacher reaches them; a teacher can read and listen but not change anything.

Moving work to the right child

If something was recorded on the wrong login, open its report from the portfolio and use Reassign…. It works for readings, spelling runs, word list tests, card games and flash-card practice, and it moves the recordings and photos with the record. Family Managers and Parents only.

Comments

Each portfolio carries a comments panel about the child, gathering notes from every session, with a route back to whichever one a note is about.

When you write one you choose who sees it: Only me, The reader and me, Parents and me, and so on. For a teacher, Only me means the author alone — a second teacher linked to the same child will not see it, and a teacher can narrow a note to named colleagues.

Comments are deliberately left out of an exported PDF. A PDF has no audience: once it is sent on, a note meant for parents would travel with it.

Sharing and exporting

A portfolio can be rendered as a PDF to send to a teacher or a grandparent, and it names the version of the app that produced the figures — the short number, such as 1.290.0.

To get everything out rather than one child's summary, see Export your data.

Family activity

For the household view rather than one child, see Family activity — a 30-day feed of everything everyone did.