Overview
The Literacy and Numeracy Precursors describe the skills students may need to establish strong language skills and develop the literacy and numeracy skills described in the National Literacy and Numeracy Learning Progressions (NLNLPs). They are intended to be precursors to the Progressions, in other words, indicators that are before Level 1 of the Progressions. Educators can use the L&N Precursors to observe and record student's skills, understanding and/or capabilities demonstrated in literacy and numeracy learning activities and work samples.
The L&N Precursors app includes:
- Precursor indicators
- Indicators from the Progressions Version 3 early levels E1a, E1b and E1c
- Indicators from the Progressions Version 3 levels 1, 2 and 3.
Educators can use this app to select students by filtering students by year, class or group to record their observations. Educator observations can be exported into a spreadsheet.
For further background information about the L&N Precursors app, click the information icon at the top of the home screen.
Viewing and entering observations
1. Click the school selection button on the top left of the screen to view schools attached to your user account. If you are associated with one school, then only that one school will be visible for you to select.
2. Select the Year, Class or Group, Student and Sub-elements you want to view. To create or manage groups, refer to Managing groups.
Note: when you select a year level, you will be able to see all groups which have students in that year level. When you select a specific group, you will be able to see all students in that group irrespective of the year level selected.
3. Click the Sub-elements filter to select the elements you want to display. Sub-elements are grouped by activity and activities are grouped into Literacy and Numeracy. Use drop-down arrows to expand the group to reveal each individual sub-element. Click the checkboxes of the sub-elements or sub-element groups you wish to include in your search. Descriptions of the selected indicators are displayed in the panel on the right. Indicators can be searched by entering their level code in the filter area.
4. Each row represents a sub-element indicator and includes the observations recorded against the indicator for the student. The most recent observation is populated in the row. Blank entries indicate that no observation has been recorded and that the student has not been assessed.
5. To view previous observations, click the button in the Observation history column. The number denotes the number of observations viewable in the Observation history timeline.
6. Now that a student and a sub-element for that student has been selected, educators can enter new observations for that student and that sub-element. Click the Student indicator status drop-down to assign the observation a status. The descriptions of each are listed below.
| Code | Name | Colour | Description |
| NA | Not assessed | Grey | The student has not been assessed yet. |
| N | Not demonstrated | Pink | The student has been provided with an opportunity to show the skills, understandings and/or capabilities represented by the learning progression indicator but they did not show them. |
| PD | Partially demonstrated | Orange | The student has been provided with an opportunity to show the skills, understandings and/or capabilities represented by the learning progression indicator and they showed them in a limited capacity. |
| D | Demonstrated | Light Green | The student has shown the skills, understandings and/or capabilities described by the learning progression indicator. |
| C | Consolidated | Dark Green | The student has consistently shown the skills, understandings and/or capabilities described by the learning progression indicator. |
7. Click the Interaction prompts field to assign one or more prompts, all five prompts can be selected if deemed appropriate. Each prompt is denoted by an abbreviated code as described below.
Code | Name | Description |
G | Gestural prompts | The educator provides a physical gesture to support a student to make a response. Gestural prompts are non-verbal prompts that include facial expressions, pointing, or physically indicating the correct response. For example, the educator points to two word cards to encourage the student to make a selection. |
M | Modelled prompts | The educator provides a demonstration of the expected behaviour or response without physical touch. For example, the educator completes part of the activity while the student watches. |
Ve | Verbal prompts | The educator provides verbal clarification without directly stating the response. This could include a description of what a student should do or a leading instruction to encourage a response. For example, the educator tells the student to “Remember, we’re counting”, “Your turn” or “Look again”. |
Vi | Visual prompts | The educator uses key word signs or provides a photo, picture, text, video, real object or other item that can be seen by the student to support them to respond. This includes positional prompts when the educator places the correct response closest to the learner or in a manner that assists in giving information about the answer. For example, the educator shows the student a visual schedule to prompt them to complete the learning activity. |
8. Click the comments field to add any additional comments about the observation. The comments box expands in size as you enter comments, and stops expanding at 7 rows. To expand further, please use the scroller on the bottom right side of the box.
Note: If you are re-assessing a specific indicator for a student and there is no change in the student indicator status and interactional prompts, please make a note of it in the comments field so that the observation history reflects that a re-assessment was done.
9. Save your observation by clicking the save button which appears in the Date recorded, Recorded by column once any of the fields have been edited. Click cancel to revert back to the existing observation.
10. If you are recording multiple observations, you can save them all at once by clicking the Save all button which appears on the top left of the screen. The count here reflects the number of observations currently being drafted and each observation row is highlighted in yellow.
If you make any changes and try to navigate away from the page without saving a warning message is displayed. 
If you try to reload the page without saving the observation, a message is displayed.
Connectivity: If internet connectivity is lost when you are entering observations a message will be displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen. Please don't make any further changes and do not refresh the page until connectivity is restored or any entered data will be lost.
Once connectivity is restored you will see this message in the bottom right corner of the screen and you may continue using the application as intended.
11. The date the observation was recorded and who it is recorded by will be visible in this column.
12. To export the report, select Export as Excel which appears on the top left of the screen. Please make sure to select the relevant indicators if you want to export them into excel.
13. The excel displays all the data displayed on the app screen except the history for each indicator.
14. The default view is Observe by student which can be changed by clicking on Switch button
15. You can record observations for all students for a selected indicator. To do so, change the view to Observe by indicator.
16. You can select other indicators by using the left and right arrow keys or by searching using a keyword.
Note: The indicators displayed here are filtered based on selection in the sub-elements field, you can change sub-elements to add/remove if required.
You can also record observations for one student at a time using multiple indicators. To do so, change the view to Observe by student.
You can click on Back to top icon to scroll to the top of the page
17. A warning message is displayed if there are any unsaved changes as the user session times out at 30 minutes.
Once the session times out, you will need to refresh the page to continue. All unsaved changed will be deleted.