Test grader

Test grader is the default teacher landing page. Take photos of a student's written test and AI grades it — a points score (like 26/29) and grade, feedback written to the student, and optionally an exercise-by-exercise breakdown. A toggle at the top switches between Single test (one student) and Whole class (grade a test for an entire class at once) — either way, each test takes up to 5 photos.

How to Grade a Test

  1. Open the Test grader (/teacher/test-grader)
  2. Enter a test name
  3. Optionally select a student from one of your classes (and, where the class has subjects, a subject) so the result can be saved to them later and active Learning Outcomes can guide the grading context
  4. Add the grading instructions and criteria describing the test — the rubric, point scale, expected answers, anything that matters. If you want the feedback in a specific format, describe it (or paste your template) and the AI follows it exactly; otherwise the feedback opens with the overall picture, then what went well, what to improve, and the most useful next step
  5. Optionally open Add the correct answers or an answer key and add up to 3 photos — a filled-in test, an answer key, or a marking scheme — so the AI has a reference for what counts as right instead of working it out. Entirely optional: writing the correct answers into the instructions above does the same job. In Whole class, one key applies to every student, and the reference photos are never graded as anyone's work
  6. Optionally open Add grading areas and list the qualities you want read across the whole test — structure, grammar, argument, whatever matters for this piece of work. Type each one and press Enter (up to 8); click an area to edit it in place. Every area comes back with its own percentage and the reasoning behind it, which is what makes an essay or a project readable when an exercise-by-exercise breakdown would be a single row. Areas describe the work; the points, score, and grade are exactly what they would be without them
  7. Optionally tick Detailed exercise-by-exercise analysis to also get an editable breakdown — one row per exercise with points and a short note
  8. Capture photos with the built-in camera or upload images from your device (up to 5 per test). Use zoom when you need to capture handwriting clearly. Click a photo to open it fullscreen — zoom into the handwriting there, and delete it if it didn't come out
  9. Click Grade the test
  10. Review and edit everything — the feedback, the points score and grade (editing the points recomputes the percentage), the exercise breakdown, and the grading areas. Under the feedback sit the AI grading notes — visible only to you: an editable notes field the student never sees, where the AI flags anything it wasn't sure about (an unreadable page, an ambiguous answer, criteria gaps) instead of guessing silently — and where you can keep your own notes
  11. If you picked a student, save the result to their profile so it's included in their progress history
  12. Download the graded test as a PDF to hand back to the student

Each graded test is saved automatically to your Graded tests history. Open, rename, or delete past tests from the history sidebar.

Grading a Whole Class

Switch to Whole class to grade a stack of tests in one sitting:

  1. Enter the test name and grading instructions once — they apply to every student, as do the answer key and the grading areas
  2. Select the class (and, where the class has subjects, a subject)
  3. Add each student's photos (1–5 each) — every student has the same photo card as a single test: click or drag images onto it, or use its Take photo button. For a pile of papers, open the camera on the first student: it shows whose test it's capturing and how many photos they have, and under it a back arrow and a Next button (naming who's up next) step through the class in order — tap Next without capturing to skip a missing test. The "students ready" counter row collapses or shows the photo cards (they tuck away automatically once the run is graded)
  4. Check the stack before you grade: click any photo to open it fullscreen, where you can zoom into the handwriting, step through that student's photos, and use Next to walk straight to the next student who has photos — the whole class in one pass without closing it. Anything that came out badly gets a Delete photo button right there, so you can re-take just those few
  5. Click Grade all. Several students are graded at the same time, so a full class finishes much faster than one after another — each still uses one AI request (however many photos their test has). Results fill in as student rows below as they finish; a failed student can be retried without regrading the rest
  6. Open any student's result to review and edit it — the same editable feedback, score, grade, exercise breakdown, and grading areas as single mode. Because one area list covers the run, every student is read against the same areas in the same order, so the class can be compared area by area. A single student can be regraded with the Regrade button inside their opened result, next to Save and Download; running Grade all again regrades the whole class with the current instructions — useful after correcting the rubric
  7. Save results individually, or Save all to students at once
  8. Once every completed result is saved, two actions appear: View test performance opens this exact test in the class's Progress grid, and Create test analysis opens the Classes Overview analysis form with this test already selected — add optional instructions and click Generate when you are ready to spend the analysis request. Editing a result after saving hides both until you save again

The whole run is saved as one entry in your Graded tests history — reopen it any time and it restores the full session in Whole class mode: the class, your instructions, and every student's photos and results, still editable. Edits autosave into the record as you make them, so nothing is lost between sessions.

The graded-test analysis includes every completed result filed from that run and states how many students are represented. Missing tests and failed grading rows stay outside it. The generated result is saved and read in Classes Overview rather than duplicated in Test grader.

What Gets Saved

When you save a graded test to a student, it appears on their record with the test name, subject, score and grade, feedback, and the exercise breakdown and grading areas when they were generated — laid out exactly as in the Test grader. The AI grading notes save as an author-private teacher note on the graded-test record. Students, organization admins, and other teachers never receive that field; the author's AI requests can use it as personalization context. This lets Test grader results sit alongside feedback, activities, and manual grades.

The saved record stays editable: open it in Classes and choose Edit from its three-dot menu to revise the feedback, points, grade, exercise breakdown, or grading areas in place — editing the grade also updates the linked entry in the student's grades.

Default Requirements

Set recurring grading instructions in Account settings -> Personalization -> Test grader. Use this for marking policies, preferred feedback style, point-scale rules, or subject-specific expectations you do not want to retype every time.

When the selected student, class, and subject have active Learning Outcomes, Test grader uses them automatically alongside your grading instructions and default requirements.

Tips for Accurate Grading

  • Make sure the photo is clear and well lit
  • Use zoom to capture handwriting details
  • Include the subject, grading criteria, and any special expectations in the context
  • Add a clear test name so it is easy to find in the student's history later

Teaching With It

Grading from a photo is the capture step of a bigger routine: the saved result — feedback and grading areas included — becomes context the assessment generator can build on for that student, so the next feedback addresses what they actually got wrong. Treat the grade itself as a performance signal to track over time; the feedback, the exercise breakdown, and the grading areas are where the teaching value is. Keeping one area set across a term is what turns those percentages into something you can follow — which qualities a student is building and which keep coming back. The full routine is in Formative assessment, and how the pieces connect in How TeachersFlow fits together.