Reportcards
Reportcards English: a coach, a reading journey and exam papers from code
Three tools for English students: English Coach, an AI essay coach marked against official exam criteria; Odyssey, a reading app; and builders that produce matched IGCSE papers.
At a glance
The problem
A student who gets ten corrections fixes none, and nobody marks practice answers between classes.
What I built
English Coach, marked against each paper's official criteria with one next step; Odyssey, a reading journey; and exam papers built from code.
What changed
English Coach is in testing: a free Reportcards account gets three responses.
Read the transcript
These are the English tools I built for Reportcards students.
A student who gets ten corrections fixes none. And between classes, there was nobody to mark a practice answer.
So I built English Coach: one estimated mark, one clear next step, and honesty about how sure it is.
The student writes an answer to a real exam question, with the passage right beside it.
It is marked against the official criteria for that exact paper, and labelled a practice estimate, never an official grade.
Odyssey turns reading into a journey: Homer's story in ten islands, each unlocked by comprehension questions.
And for I.G.C.S.E. English, the papers come from code, so a question can never point at the wrong line.
Why the English tools work like this
Honest feedback, one step at a time
A student who gets ten corrections fixes none. English Coach is built around one estimated mark, one clear next step, and saying plainly how sure it is.
Read the feedback screen
A practice paragraph on A Midsummer Night's Dream.
- An estimate, and it says so
The mark is an estimate of the level a whole essay like this could reach. Every result is labelled a practice estimate, not an official grade.
- It admits what it has not checked
If the second accuracy check has not run yet, the screen says so, instead of sounding more certain than it is.
- One biggest next step
Feedback leads with the single fix that will move the mark most, tied to the assessment objective it comes from.
- Practise, own essay, progress
Four plain tabs: practise a set task, bring your own essay, see your attempts, see your progress.
Decisions, and why
Marked against the real criteria
An answer is marked against the official criteria for that exact paper: Cambridge, IB, CBSE and CISCE.
Why: Generic writing advice does not move exam marks. The criteria the examiner uses do.
The passage beside the answer
On the practice screen the extract sits on the left and the answer box on the right, with paragraph or full-essay mode.
Why: Students quote from the text. Flipping between tabs to find a line breaks the thinking.
Reading as ten islands
Odyssey splits Homer's story into ten islands, each unlocked by comprehension questions, with a teacher approving new students.
Why: A journey gives a young reader a reason to finish the next chapter; the teacher sees every attempt and score.
Odyssey lives on its own
Odyssey briefly lived inside the ERP; I split it back out onto its own database.
Why: So an ERP change can never reach a student in the middle of a lesson.
Exam papers from code
For IGCSE English 0500 one content model produces a matched question paper, reading insert and mark scheme.
Why: Line references in the questions are generated from the printed insert and checked, so a question can never point at the wrong line.
How a student uses English Coach
Pick a set text and a real exam-style question, with the passage on screen.
Answer as a paragraph or a full essay.
It is marked against that paper's official criteria and labelled a practice estimate.
Work on the biggest next step, then try again.
In testing now: a free Reportcards account gets three responses.
Walk through it
English Coach
English Coach is an AI essay coach for English literature and language students, at reportcards.in/literature-coach. A student writes an answer to a real exam-style task and it is marked against the official exam criteria for that paper, with the biggest next fix spelled out. It covers Cambridge, IB, CBSE and CISCE papers, and every result is labelled a practice estimate, not an official grade. It is in testing now: a free Reportcards account gets three responses.
Odyssey
Odyssey is a separate English enrichment app at reportcards.in/odyssey, on its own database. Homer's story is split into ten islands, each unlocked by comprehension questions. New students wait for a teacher to approve them, and the teacher view shows every attempt and score. The app shell loads offline; signing in and saving an attempt need a connection. It briefly lived inside the ERP before I split it back out, so an ERP change can never reach a student in the middle of a lesson.
Exam paper builders
Practice papers come out of code rather than a word processor. For IGCSE English 0500, one content model produces a matched question paper, reading insert and mark scheme, and the line references in the questions are generated from the rendered insert and checked against its printed line numbers. A second engine turns one set of teaching content into matching Word and PDF study packs.
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