Community reviews for NoRedInk

Our English department has used this for the past two years. The first year, they used the free version. They like it so well that we now have the paid version. Students enjoy the competition of knowing who has the most lessons completed.

Noredink has been the piece I was looking for in practicing grammar. It is unique because it is individualized for each student based on their interests. The dashboard is easy to use, allowing the teacher to assign specific areas as well as individualize for more help if needed. The assignments break down into separate areas and even groups your students on their level of proficiency. The one downfall is that it is difficult to find out the price for a pro license. Some of the skills are blocked and can only be accessed if you have a pro license. Unfortunately, you need to call the company for a price. I would have liked the prices listed on the site, especially if an individual teacher wanted the pro license and not an entire school.

I really enjoy using No Red Ink in my classroom. The free or premium version is great for upper elementary and middle school students. It helps teachers provide differentiated grammar instruction as many students need different types of grammar instruction. I like that it has pre and post-assessments to help determine what lessons students exactly need. It's easy to assign different lessons to different students, so that all students are engaged and challenged. The only confusing part is that each class has a different class code, so it's important to give the students the correct class code.

I love NoRedInk. Students are very engaged by the pop culture and choice aspect of the sentences, and are challenged to gain automaticity by virtue of the endless practice the site can generate. I love the color-coded dashboard, which makes it really easy to understand what they still need to practice. I wish there was a feature that "diagnosed" errors in student work; not the test, but an actual piece of writing that the program would analyze and automatically use to assign skill work.

Teaching punctuation is one of those things that is necessary, but it's really hard to teach in such a way that students' eyes don't simply glaze over. Some kids get things right away, while others need a lot of time to figure out the nuances. Noredink allows me to do a short lesson on a point of punctuation and then just focus on the kids who had trouble. I can see which kids master a skill and let them move on. This is the strength of the site. One way in which they could improve the system is to create some kind of incentive for students to push themselves a bit harder to master skills themselves. I actually CAN'T BELIEVE I AM SAYING THAT, because I generally don't like sites that give 'badges' and stars and things like that. With noredink, however, when a student makes a mistake, I have found that they often ignore the instruction/teaching the site gives them in response to their errors. This can result in some kids making the same types of mistakes OVER AND OVER again unless a teacher uses the information provided to give further instruction. You might be thinking, "Uh, what's wrong with that?" and you would be right. There is nothing wrong with that. The site has the potential, however, to have students learn and master things independently. The way it is designed, most do not seem interested in doing so.

NoRedInk is a great site where students can practice their grammar. I really like the very visual way you can track student progress - it shows you in a nice spreadsheet your students' progress, color-coded by their success in that area of grammar. You assign grammar quizzes and lessons to have students practice different areas of grammar. What they have now is nice, I just hope they continue adding to it.