To help teachers save valuable time while offering a tool to help start a conversation between caregivers and students, Amplify now offers batch download of the mCLASS Home Connect letters via the Home Connect Batch Download page. Administrators at the district or municipal level can bulk download Home Connect letters for a whole district at once, which can then be sent home to caregivers. The Home Connect letters contain results from Benchmark assessments completed during the current time of year using mCLASS with DIBELS 8th Edition.
Updates to Home Connect Batch Download
mCLASS has made some exciting updates to the Home Connect Batch Download letters:
The Home Connect Batch Download letters now include the Student ID in the top right corner of the first page of the letter.
Student assessment results for the mCLASS RAN, mCLASS Spelling, mCLASS Vocabulary, and mCLASS Oral Language Screener assessments (for students with results for those measures) are included on the Home Connect Batch Download letters.
Accessing Home Connect Batch Download
You can access the Home Connect Batch Download page via Programs & Apps if you are an administrator and have access at the district level or higher.
Log into learning.amplify.com as an administrator.
From Educator Home, click Programs & Apps.
Scroll to the Tools section and click Home Connect Batch Download.
The Home Connect Batch Download page displays. If you do not see the Home Connect Batch Download tile and you think you should, reach out to your enrollment contact.
Navigating the Home Connect Batch Download page
At the right of the page, the Getting Started link opens this article.
Click + New Batch to start your Home Connect letter download.
The Home Connect Batch Download table displays information about your download history. If you haven’t used the Batch Download tool yet, a message displays in the table.
Batch Name: Home Connect batches are sequentially named Home Connect Batch # and listed in chronological order by creation date (e.g., Home Connect Batch 1, Home Connect Batch 2).
Date Created: Displays the date and time when the batch creation started.
Status: Displays In Progress while the batch is being created, Generated for a successful batch, or Failed for an unsuccessful batch.
Actions:
Click Details to open the Details panel and display information about the batch.
Click Download to download a successful batch to your computer.
New batch
When you click + New Batch, the New Batch dialog box opens.
District: Your district name displays at the upper left. If you have access to multiple districts, a list displays. Select the district you want to create a Home Connect Batch for from the list. You must generate a Home Connect Batch for one district at a time. IMPORTANT: If you have access to a municipality containing multiple districts, or access to a group of schools across multiple districts, please do not select these options from the list, as the batch will not generate successfully. Please generate Home Connect batches for one district at a time.
Assessment: The assessment described in the letters (currently DIBELS 8th Edition only).
Time of Year: The current Time of Year (TOY) is selected by default. You can select another available TOY (only past TOYs are available to select).
Language: English and Spanish are the available languages to generate the letters; your language selection applies to all letters in the batch.
Output: You can select to output separate PDFs for each school or separate PDFs for each student.
If you select Separate PDFs (1 per school), continue to Generating a Batch Download.
If you select Separate PDFs (1 per student), the File Name and Student ID options display. These are used to generate the file name for each student PDF.
File Name: Select Student ID and TOY (if you plan to create batches for multiple TOYs) or select Student ID only for the file name. Pause on the i icon for an example of the file name.
Student ID: Select Primary ID or Secondary ID. The ID type you select should match the unique student ID type in your district’s parent portal. To verify whether the student IDs used in your district’s parent portal are marked as Primary ID or Secondary ID in Amplify’s system, you can generate a Download Your Data report in mCLASS RAS (Reporting and Analysis Suite) and search for these columns.
The Generate button is inactive until you make all required selections.
Generating a batch
On the Home Connect Batch Download page, click + New Batch.
The New Batch window displays.
Select the Time of Year (TOY) you want to generate letters for. Only current and previous TOYs are available to select. The example shown is during Beginning of Year (BOY).
Select the language to generate the letters. You can choose English, Spanish, or both; your selection applies to all letters in the batch.
Select how to output the batch:
If you select Separate PDFs (1 per school), separate PDFs are created for each school.
If you select Separate PDFs (1 per student), a separate PDF is created for each student. Make sure to complete the File Name and Student ID sections because these are used to generate the file name for each student PDF.
After you complete the New Batch form, click Generate.
The New Batch window closes and the Home Connect Batch Download table displays a loading icon.
Your new batch displays in the Home Connect Batch Download table with a status of In Progress until the batch is created. You can create another batch while the current one is in progress.
Downloading the Home Connect letters
The Home Connect Batch Download table displays In Progress while a batch is being created. Once the batch is complete, the status changes to Generated for a successful batch, or Failed for an unsuccessful batch. You will receive an email to your Amplify email address when the batch creation is complete or if it is unsuccessful.
To download your batch of Home Connect letters:
Navigate to the Home Connect Batch Download page.
Click Download in the Home Connect Batch Download table or the Details panel.
The Download button becomes inactive and a message displays saying that downloading is in progress.When the download is complete, the ZIP file containing the letters displays in the browser download panel.
Fixing a failed batch
If your batch has a Failed Status, the Download button is inactive so you cannot download it. You’ll need to try creating a new batch.
To view information about the batch, click Details in the Actions column.
The Details panel for the batch opens.
Find the error message in the Status section of the Details panel.
If you selected Separate PDFs (1 per student) for Output and selected Secondary ID for Student ID, but the students in your district do not have Secondary IDs, the error message will prompt you to change your selection for Student ID. Start a new batch and select Primary ID for Student ID.
Some errors may be due to connection issues. In this case you should try creating a new batch and selecting Separate PDFs (1 per school) for Output.
Close the Details panel and click + New Batch. Follow the instructions in Generating a batch (changing your selections as necessary to correct errors).
For more information about Home Connect letters, see the Help for your mCLASS product. Refer to Support for mCLASS assessment and mCLASS Intervention for support with navigating the mCLASS Help resources.