How to Track Student Progress During Live Practice
The best time to help a student is when they get stuck, not when you hand back marking the next day. By then the lesson has moved on and you're reteaching from cold. Live practice changes the timing: while students answer on their own devices, you can see who is working steadily, who has stalled and who has stopped answering, and step in before a slip turns into a misconception. This article covers reading those signals and acting on them during the lesson.
What "live" gives you
In a live practice session, students work through questions on their own devices and get instant right/wrong feedback with points. Students either work through the questions in order, with you able to move the whole class to a question, or use Free navigation and go at their own pace. Either way, what you gain is visibility. Instead of circulating and glancing over shoulders, you get one view of the whole class that updates as they work.
That view is the Live Student Grid, part of the Teacher Plus and School plans. Students always join free with a join code; the grid is your view of what they are doing.
Reading the live student grid
The grid gives you a tile per student, each carrying a few plain signals about status and progress. It does not diagnose why a student is struggling or run any automated "gap analysis". That interpretation is yours; the grid makes the raw signals quick to read.
- In progress vs completed. See who's still working and who has finished, so you know whether the class is ready to move on or half of them are still on question three.
- A "struggling" signal. When a student answers the same question wrong three times, their tile flags it. That's your cue to look closer: it might be one tricky item, or a misconception worth taking to the whole room.
- Help flags. Students can tap a flag to ask for help without putting a hand up or interrupting the class. Quieter students get a way to say they're stuck without speaking up.
- Questions completed and current score. Each tile shows how far through the set a student is and how they're doing, so pace and performance sit side by side.
- Click for attempt history. Tap a student to see exactly what they tried on each question. This is where you learn whether a wrong answer was a slip or a genuine misunderstanding.
You can also fold the detail panel away when you want the whole class on screen. The grid updates as students work and refreshes itself automatically if the live connection drops, so you never need to reload the page.
Presence and pacing
Alongside status, each tile shows the student's presence: Active, Away, Offline or Left. Away next to a half-finished set means the student's page is hidden or out of focus. Treat it as a prompt to check in, because it does not tell you why. Offline means the connection dropped while ClassKite was on screen (Wi-Fi, a flat battery), which is worth knowing before you draw conclusions about effort.
Presence also helps with pacing. If most students are Active and most tiles show "completed", move the class on. If a cluster is still in progress, give them another 30 seconds before you leave a third of the class behind. Reading presence and progress together keeps the room roughly in step without singling anyone out.
Turn the signal into action
The grid is only worth having if it changes what you do next: you step in earlier, and you know who needs what. Three moves cover most situations.
- Spot a common mistake, then reteach. If several tiles flag struggling on the same question, that's a whole-class signal. Pause, switch to the Smart Board and work the problem through full-screen, annotating live. Follow-me paging keeps everyone on your page while your writing appears on their screens, and you can push a fresh question to check the fix has worked.
- Target individuals. A single struggling or help flag is a one-to-one cue. Open that student's attempt history, see what they tried, and go and have a word without stopping everyone else.
- Adjust the pace. If most of the class has completed and scores look solid, move on. If progress is uneven, slow down, hold off moving the class on, or give fast finishers an extension task while the rest catch up. The grid shows you which of these the room needs.
The common mistake: watching instead of acting
The biggest trap with a live view is treating it as something to monitor. It's satisfying to watch tiles turn to "completed" and scores climb, and easy to spend a whole session observing. A struggling flag you noticed and ignored is worse than no flag, because the student stayed stuck while you watched. Make it a habit that every flag or stall gets a response within a minute or two, even if it's only "I'll come to you next". The grid earns its place by shortening the time between a student getting stuck and you helping.
After the lesson: reports
Live signals are for the lesson; reports are for the longer view. Once the session ends you get a per-session breakdown (completion, average score, right first time and solved) and a row for every student. The sessions list keeps a record over time, and a score-trend chart shows whether the class is improving or slipping. Download any session as a CSV to keep your own records or share with a colleague.
As with the grid, reports show the numbers, not the cause. There is no automated learning-gap analysis: you read how much the class got right first time, notice a practice most students found hard, and decide it needs revisiting. Reports are part of the same Teacher Plus and School plans.
In the classroom
Here is an illustrative example. A Year 9 maths teacher runs a live practice on solving equations with Free navigation on. A few minutes in, three tiles flag struggling on the same two-step question. She opens one student's attempt history and sees they are dividing before they subtract, a common slip when undoing operations. Rather than fix it three times, she stops the class, pulls up the question on the Smart Board and works it through with live annotation so everyone sees the correct order. She pushes one more two-step question to check it has stuck, watches the tiles turn green, and lets the class carry on. After the lesson she checks the session report, sees how little the class got right first time, and pencils in a recap next week. None of it needed marking, and all of it happened while the lesson was still running.
Frequently asked questions
What does the grid show me?
A tile per student with their status (in progress, completed or flagged), a struggling signal after three wrong answers on the same question, any help flags they raise, their presence (Active, Away, Offline or Left), and their questions completed and current score. Click a student for their full attempt history. The grid shows status and performance; working out why a student is struggling is up to you.
Does it update in real time?
Yes. The grid updates as students answer, without you reloading the page. If the live connection drops, the grid refreshes itself automatically until the connection is back.
How do I act on a struggling signal mid-lesson?
If it's one student, open their attempt history to see what they tried and have a quick targeted word. If several flag the same question, treat it as a whole-class signal: pause, switch to the Smart Board, reteach the problem with live annotation and follow-me paging, then push a fresh question to check it has worked.
Which plans include the live student grid?
The Live Student Grid and reports are part of the Teacher Plus and School plans. On Teacher Basic the grid is shown blurred. Students always join practice free with a join code. Compare what each plan includes on the pricing page, and schools can read more about seats and admin on the schools page.
Try it in your next lesson
Run one practice session with the grid open, answer every flag within a minute, and see how the lesson changes when you help students while they are stuck instead of the day after. You can sign in to get started or compare features and plans on the pricing page. For a whole lesson from start to finish, our guide to using ClassKite step by step walks through a full lesson.
Written by the ClassKite team and reviewed by a practising teacher.