For teachers
Reading speed test for a class
Give your class one link. Each pupil reads a passage and answers six questions, then can send you their words per minute and score. No names, no accounts.
Class sessions need JavaScript. The reading speed test itself works for each pupil either way.
How it works
- Press Start a class session. You get a six-character class code and a link for your pupils.
- Share the link in your class page or chat, or print the join sheet. Pupils need no account and type no name.
- Each pupil reads one passage at their own pace on their own device and answers six questions about it. Before they start, the page tells them which class they are in and what they can send.
- After the result, a pupil can press Send to my teacher. Nothing is sent unless they press it.
- This page shows the results as they arrive, in the order they arrive: words per minute, questions correct out of six and effective WPM, with the class median and the middle half. Download them as a CSV file.
What is stored, and for how long
For the class session: its code, a one-way hash of your private key, when it started and when it closes, and how many results it holds. For each result a pupil sends: the words per minute (or nothing, when the page did not count the speed), how many of the six questions were right, and when it arrived. There are no names, no accounts, no answers and nothing typed, and no network address is stored with any of it.
A class session closes 7 days after you start it: from then on nothing in it can be read or added, and our database deletes it automatically within a few days. Delete this class now removes it and every result at once. A class session takes up to 200 results.
Your private address
Once you start a class session, this page’s address ends in #code=…&key=…. That key is what lets you, and only you, see and delete the results. It stays after the #, which browsers never send to a website, so it is not in any page address we receive, not in our audience measurement and not in anything sent to another site; this page sends it to our server only to read or delete your class’s results. Bookmark the page to come back to it. Anyone you give that address to can see and delete the results, so give pupils only their link.
Before you use it with a class
- The passages are original texts written for adult readers, at three levels of complexity that are not school grades. Read one yourself first and decide whether it suits your class.
- Words per minute is measured on each pupil’s own device and is affected by the screen, the text and interruptions. It is not a reading age, a grade level, a percentile or a diagnosis, and the class view ranks nobody.
- You decide whether to use it with your pupils and how to explain it to them. The privacy policy says exactly what is kept, in section 2.7, and section 12 covers pupils under 16.