Lessons in the sidebar opens the library, and every New assignment and Assign a lesson button in the app lands in the same place. The page heading reads Explore, which is the same place under a different name.
Find a chapter#
The box marked Search chapters matches on chapter titles and summaries and tells you how many results it found. Clear it with the small x to go back to the browsing view. When Trace offers more than one subject, a dropdown next to the search box picks it, and a second dropdown narrows to the school years a chapter is written for, such as 11-12.
Below the toolbar, chapters appear as cards. Pressing one opens the chapter, and the breadcrumb at the top takes you back.
Learn the four words the assign dialog uses#
Trace stacks material four levels deep, and the assign dialog asks you to pick among them by name.
- A chapter is a high-level topic, such as language models and agents.
- A unit is a tested arc inside that chapter. There are usually three or four, and each one ends with a unit test.
- A package is one or two closely related ideas taught in depth. A unit holds two to four of them.
- Inside a package sit the activities: one to five articles, one lab, and one quiz.
Opening a chapter shows its units. Opening a unit shows each package with its activity rows and a count of how many are done, and the unit test sits below them all. Most chapters open with an introduction unit that carries a reading or two, no quiz, and no test.
What a student meets in each kind of activity#
An Article is a reading with diagrams and worked examples. The student presses Mark complete at the end, and on a phone a thin progress line at the top of the screen shows how far through they are. Articles and labs carry an Ask about this lesson button that opens the AI Tutor with the lesson, chapter, and subject already named.
A Lab is a small simulation the student plays with in the browser. Every lab ends by asking for a written reflection, and its Save my run button stays disabled until that box has something in it, so an empty reflection is the most common reason a student says the lab will not save.
A Quiz is five multiple-choice questions with four options each, asked one at a time with feedback after each answer. When the run finishes, the student can read back every question, the option they chose, the correct option, and an explanation, and Try again stays available. A package counts as done once the lab run is saved and every quiz question is right.
A Unit test closes a unit. It draws twenty-five questions from a bank of fifty covering the whole unit, and passing takes eighty percent. Trace does not assign a grade for any of this, and nothing in the library produces a score you can put in a gradebook.
Preview an activity before you assign it#
Pressing any activity row opens that activity for you. Because you are not enrolled in the subject, the player shows a Preview badge instead of a progress state and records nothing, so you can read an article, play through a lab, or take a quiz all the way to its answer review without leaving a mark anywhere. This works for all four kinds.
The class panel on the right also carries Preview as student, which opens the first activity of whatever you have open, the chapter or the single unit. Use the activity rows when you want a specific lab or quiz.
See what your class already has#
When you open a chapter as a teacher, the right-hand column changes from the learner's progress to a panel headed Assigning to with your active class underneath. It counts coverage as "8 of 24 activities assigned" and offers one button, Assign chapter to your class, or Assign unit to your class when a single unit is open. Underneath, Assign a single unit lists every unit with its own assigned count and its own Assign button.
Each activity row also carries an Assign button of its own. Assigning is covered in full in the guide on assigning work.
Understand why some material is not offered#
Only published activities can be assigned. An unpublished one still appears in the list, but its Assign button is disabled and hovering it says "This activity is not published yet, so it cannot be assigned." If a whole chapter or unit is unpublished, the panel's assign button is disabled too, with the note "Nothing here is published yet."
Open a chapter's teacher pack#
Chapters that have a published teacher pack show a Teacher resources row near the top with five buttons: Guide, Slideshows, Worksheets, Questions, and Glossary. Each opens the chapter's resources page at the matching tab, where the tabs carry slightly different names (Guide, Questions, Worksheet presets, Glossary, and Decks and sub-kits). A chapter with no pack shows no row at all.
Ask the assistant what to teach#
Trace has an assistant that suggests chapters from the catalog when you
describe your students. It is on the public page at /try, under the heading
Ask what to teach, and it needs no account. You type a year level and what
your students are interested in, or press one of the three suggested openers,
and it replies with real chapter names and the year bands they suit. It is not
in the signed-in lesson library.
What this page does not do#
- It does not show you a student's answers or progress. That lives in the class Progress section and on each assignment's own page.
- Previewing an activity records nothing, so nothing you do here appears in any student's history or your own.
- The library shows every published chapter, not only the ones you have assigned, so a chapter appearing here does not mean your class can see it.
- Trace does not score, rank, or gate anything you read here.