Getting Started

Welcome to InnerOrbit’s Getting Started Training!

In this first video, we will show you how to navigate and get the best experience out of this Getting Started Training. 

Follow along to assign your first activity or assessment!

In this video, you’ll learn more about InnerOrbit and how we support awesome science teachers like you!

• Phenomena & Sensemaking
• Assessments
• 3-Dimensional Reports

• To log into your InnerOrbit account, visit innerorbit.com and click on the top right corner of your screen.

• Depending on how your school set up your account, use 1) sign in with Google, 2) log in with Clever OR 3) the username/password option.

• If you do not have an InnerOrbit license, sign up for a free trial by clicking the orange “Teachers, Sign Up!” button. Click “I’m a Teacher” and fill out the requested information.

When you first login, you can access 3 resources on InnerOrbit:

1. Science Assessments: Search by Keyword or Standard OR use the Browse Tiles (the following 2 videos give more info on these assessments!)

2. Inventories: Large assessments that span all standards in an elementary/middle school grade or high school course. 

3. SEP Practice Problems (learn more here)

To assign a Pre-Made Assessment:

Step 1: Search by standard or keyword OR use the browse tile

Step 2: Scroll to “Pre-Made Assessments” section

Step 3: Click on an assessment

• Scaffolded Formative: for assessing a wider array of rigor, best used mid-learning
• Sensemaking Summative: for assessing full mastery of standard, best used post-learning
• Inventory: for assessing many standards across a grade band/course, best used for pre or post-learning

Step 4: Click “Use All Questions”

Step 5: Click “View Your Assessment”

Step 6: Modify your assessment by:

• Deleting questions
• Modifying questions
• Adding more questions by searching for another standard/keyword

Step 7: Title and Save Assessment

Step 8: See assessment in Library tab or Assign to Classes!

Follow along to build your first activity or assessment! First, let’s navigate to your “Build” tab or by clicking the green “New Assessment” button.

There are 2 ways to search on innerorbit: the search bar or the browse tiles. If you have a specific standard in mind, use the search bar. You can also type in any of the NGSS dimensions, like “DCI “and look through the search results. If you’d rather browse, use the tiles to narrow down your choices.
Let’s try looking for standard MS-LS2-1.
We can either use the search bar or click through the browse tiles (Middle School > Life Science > MS-LS2 Ecosystems > MS-LS2-1).
Scroll down to “Matching Phenomena with Questions”. Here you’ll see that there are 4 unique phenomena for this MS-LS2-1 standard.

Click on a tile to preview the phenomenon and corresponding questions. Read through the phenomenon, figures, and data.

Then, keep scrolling to see the phenomenon’s questions. There are 4 levels of rigor to InnerOrbit’s questions. When building an assessment or activity, consider where your students are in their learning journey.

1. Prior Knowledge: Focus on the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), the content part of the NGSS standards, but from the prior grade level.
2. On Grade Level Knowledge: These are still 1-dimensional questions, focused on the DCI, but now these question are targeted at grade-level content.
3. Formative: Focus on 2 of the 3 dimensions of the standard. These questions will always focus on the DCI, but will layer on either the Crosscutting Concept (CCC) OR the Science and Engineering Practice (SEP).
4. Summative: Focus on all 3 dimensions of the standard (DCI + SEP + CCC). These are the most rigorous questions and assess the full mastery of the performance expectation.

You can see which prior grade level standard is being assessed in the standards tags. For example, for this MS-LS2-1 phenomenon, this question is written focused on the 5th Grade DCI that leads to this middle school standard.

Click “Add to Quiz” to add the question to your assessment. The assessment will start to build in the upper-right corner of your screen, kind of like your virtual shopping cart!

Click “View your Assessment” to see your selections.

Create a name for the activity. And then press Save. You can find this activity in your Assessments Tab under “Created by You”.

Clever/Classlink

If your school is syncing your InnerOrbit rosters via Clever or Classlink, you will see all your classes and students here. These rosters are automatically sync’d nightly so you do not need to worry about making any changes.

Google Classroom

If you use Google Classroom, click the Google Classroom icon and follow the on screen prompts to import your rosters from Google Classroom. 

Roster with Add Codes for Google Emails

If you do not use Clever, Classlink or Google Classroom, but your students’ school emails are GOOGLE emails, click “create new roster”.

Name the roster. Select a grade level. Select the session or create your own start and end date. And click “create roster”.

You can send this add code link to have students join your roster.

(No Clever, Classlink, or Google) Username/Password

If you do not roster via Clever, Classlink, Google Classroom, AND do not have Google emails, follow these step-by-step instructions on how to create your students’ accounts.

Students will login to InnerOrbit via Username, Password, and School ID.

1) To find the assessment you built, go to the “Created by You “ section under the “Library” tab.

2) Click into your assessment tile! You will find the assignment settings on the right side.

• Assign: Check the circles (blue checks show assessment is assigned to that roster)
• Due Date: Type or choose your due date in the text box
• Show/Hide Scores and Answers: Teal button on the top right
  
• Lock/Unlock: Students can see the assigned assessment on their dashboard, but can open it
  

InnerOrbit’s multiple choice + drag and drop questions are automatically scored and are worth 1 point.

The drawing + typed response questions need to be graded and are worth 4 points.

Here is how to grade these responses:

1) Under the “Grading” tab, you will see the assessments that need to be scored. Click “Grade Now”.

2) Use the rubric to score students on a scale of 0 to 4.

• For typed response questions, You will have a pink box for you to type and highlight trending word in student responses.
  

3) To give student feedback, simply click on the bubble icon.

InnerOrbit offers 4 different reports, providing you detailed NGSS data. Here, we are diving into our teachers’ 2 favorite reports. 

1) Go to your “Reports” tab. Click “Dimensions”.

2) You will see your data broken into the 3 dimensions of the NGSS – Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI), Science and Engineer Practices (SEP), Cross-cutting Concepts (CCC). You can stay high level here to see how students are doing on the dimensions.

3) Fine-tooth comb the data with the filter.

1) Go to “Reports” tab. Click “Assignments”.

2) You will see an overview of all assessments in the current school year. Click the “blue button to view the full report”.

3) The proficiency & completion bar are on the top. Below that, you will see the student’s score for this assessment. You can “click on the student’s name” to view their answersheet.

4) Scroll pass the list of student’s name. You will find the question analysis. Hover over to see the details.