Want to reduce the time it takes to write reports?
Interested in finding an easier way to summarise & share progress with children & their parents?

Connecting Steps Advanced Features

We have developed our Advanced Features for Connecting Steps to do just this and more! Access our new Advanced Features to summarise key assessments that have been achieved, summarise key next steps and write reports.

The summaries are created using Artificial Intelligence (AI), based on criteria selected by the teacher, the report is then created about the student for parents to read. They can be specifically written for the student to help them understand the progress they are making. They can also be translated into 40 other languages!  Book a free online meeting with our team to find out more about how Advanced Features can save you time:

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Available now for Connecting Steps customers

Make it easier to share progress and save teachers’ time, particularly when working on End of Year Reports! See how much time our Advanced Features will save you! 

Using Generative AI to Reduce Teacher Workload

Dale has written a short guide on using Generative AI to reduce teacher workload. It explains how within Connecting Steps, we are using Microsoft’s private ChatGPT through Azure OpenAI services for privacy and security. It also gives step by step instructions on how to summarise key achievements, summarise next steps and create a lesson plan using our new Advanced Features. 

download guide

Just £1 per pupil per year

Existing Connecting Steps users can access Advanced Features for a small fee of £1 per pupil, per year!

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Not currently a Connecting Steps customer? 

Book a free online meeting with us to find out more about Connecting Steps and Advanced Features…

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Once you’ve seen the time you can save and the ease with which you can summarise and share progress information with pupils and parents, we think you’ll agree this is great value for money.

These new features enable you to:

  • Summarise key assessments that have been achieved, chosen by the teacher, into a nice short paragraph that can be written about the student or to the student.
  • Summarise key next steps, chosen by the teacher, into a nice short paragraph that can be written about the student or to the student.
  • Write lesson plans based on assessment points chosen by the teacher and topic and resources of your choice.

The UK Prime Minister recently announced that every teacher will benefit from new AI tools.

Connecting Steps is already using AI to benefit teachers and parents!

“AI has extraordinary potential to reform our education system for the better, with considerable value for both teachers and students.”

How does Advanced Features work?

Our Advanced Features utilises the information you have provided in Connecting Steps to generate comprehensive reports. To accomplish this, we leverage the power of AI and Microsoft’s private ChatGPT hosted on our web app. By sending the data, we receive a prompt response from ChatGPT, which we then refine and present to you as the final report within seconds.

So, what information do we actually send? When you request a report using Advanced Features, we transmit the specified achievements and additional contextual data to ChatGPT. However, it’s important to note that we prioritise the protection of sensitive student information. Therefore, we do not send the student’s actual name. Instead, before transmitting the request to ChatGPT, we determine the student’s gender and assign them a fictional name based on this – Fred for males and Mary for females. Once we receive a response from ChatGPT, we seamlessly replace the fictional name with the student’s real name.

The details we send to ChatGPT include the student’s age, reading age, framework, subject, level, next level, topic, resources, achievements, Achievement Types, Primary Needs, and language. By providing this information, we enable ChatGPT to generate accurate and personalised responses tailored to each student’s unique needs and requirements.

Rest assured that our utmost priority is maintaining the privacy and security of student data while harnessing the power of AI to enhance our reporting capabilities.

Webinar: Connecting Steps Advanced Features

Our MD Dale Pickles ran a short webinar explaining how to access the new Advanced Features and got some great feedback.

The webinar is an introduction to the new Advanced Features in Connecting Steps. It explains how to:

  • Summarise key next steps or key achievements instantly.
  • Translate reports into the pupil’s home language easily.
  • Share progress reports or next steps, with students, written for the child, to help them understand.
  • Generate lesson plans effortlessly by choosing targets, the topic and the resources you want to use.
Connecting Steps Advanced Features

What do the progress summaries look like?

When you generate a progress summary it can be easily copied and pasted into where you need it, so it can be reviewed. Or you can save it as a PDF. This will help make report writing easier. 

Here is an example we created for Edward – a student working on our Primary Curriculum framework.

About Edward – summarised for his parents
“Edward has made good progress in mastering writing numbers to 10, matching numerals to 20, and comparing two groups using counting. He is gaining skills and understanding in identifying and representing numbers using objects, pictorial representations, and the number line, as well as consistently comparing numbers to 20. However, he has not started describing the position of objects using ordinal numbers or matching ordinal numbers to cardinal numbers. He also needs to work on naming a digit as the ‘tens’ or ‘units’ in a number to 20, estimating where to place a number on a number line to 20, and making sensible estimates using non-standard measures.”

About Edward – summarised for Edward
“Good job, Edward! You’re getting really good at writing numbers up to 10, matching numbers up to 20, and counting to compare groups of things. You can now tell how many things there are by looking at pictures and you’re really good at comparing things that have numbers up to 20. We can keep working on using words like ‘first’ or ‘second’ to talk about where things are and matching those words with the right numbers. It would also be helpful to practice saying which number is in the ‘tens’ or ‘ones’ place in numbers up to 20, guessing where a number goes on a number line up to 20, and making good guesses using things like blocks or other objects. Keep up the good work, Edward!

Give our great new Advanced Features a try to see how they can help you save time and easily summarise and share progress!

40 languages available

English
Afrikaans
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese Simplified
Chinese Traditional
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Filipino

Finnish
French
German
Greek
Gujarati
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian

Japanese
Kannada
Korean
Malay
Norwegian
Pirate
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian

Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese

Language translation

The system can also output summaries into 40 different languages, alongside English! Here’s an example…

Want an easy way to show pupil progress?

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The addition of the advanced features has allowed staff who are responsible for the creation of annual review paperwork the ability to work in a far more timely fashion as the information about student progress is readily available and quick to access. This has also created one system only for the tracking of student progress across the school as in class assessment data is now linked directly to the EHCP process as well as whole school tracking and reporting.

In essence this system now makes everyone’s lives easier and has enhanced the outcomes for the young people we work with.

Ian Graham-Wells, Headteacher • Marshfields