A weekly routine for SAT classes: sets, replays, live lessons and a monthly mock
Tools are only useful if they fit into a week. This is a routine that fits a class meeting once or twice a week, with under an hour of the teacher's time outside lessons.
The routine is five steps a week and one a month: assign a set, review it, read the analysis, top up with adaptive practice, teach a live lesson, and sit a class mock every four weeks or so. The days below assume a class that meets on Saturday; shift them to suit yours.
Monday: assign a set with a due date
Assign one focused set on this week's topic, 15 to 20 questions, due on Wednesday evening. The material can be your own (written, imported, or converted from a PDF on Classroom and Academy), from My questions, or from the Colorbook question bank on Coach and above.
Keeping the due date well before the lesson is the point of the whole routine: it leaves you time to look at the work before you teach.
Thursday: gradebook and replays (20 minutes)
Open the gradebook and find two things: the questions most of the class missed, and any student well below their usual score. Then replay three or four students on each class-wide miss. Look for the patterns: a right answer changed to a wrong one, the correct choice crossed out early, very fast wrong answers, very slow ones. Replays and analysis goes through each.
Thursday: Colorbook AI analysis (10 minutes)
For the students you flagged, read the Colorbook AI analysis: standard on Coach, detailed on Classroom and Academy. Check it against the replays you have just watched. Where it agrees, it has saved you time; where it does not, trust the replay. On Academy, look at cohort analysis once a month rather than weekly, to see which topics are weak across classes.
Friday: adaptive sets for revision
On Classroom and Academy, adaptive sets are picked from the Colorbook bank by each student's weakest topics. Classroom includes 3 adaptive class sets a week; Academy also includes 3 adaptive sets per student a week. They keep earlier topics alive without you building revision sets by hand.
A sensible split: the Monday set is new material you chose; the adaptive sets are revision the data chose. Students should know which is which.
Saturday: a live lesson in tutor mode
Teach the lesson around what Thursday showed you. In tutor mode you can put questions on students' screens from a playlist, see their highlights and pointer live, and talk on a voice or video call; whole-class mode, on Classroom and Academy, shows every screen at once. Lessons go on your timetable, which offers a calendar feed so they appear in your own calendar app.
A useful shape for a 60-minute lesson: open with the question most of the class missed, teach the method on two more, then a run of independent questions with auto-send while you watch.
Once a month: a class mock
Every four weeks or so, replace the Monday set with a class mock: a full SAT-shaped paper, or a single section, adaptive, at Standard difficulty. Start it together from the lobby, or schedule it with a start window so it appears on students' timetables. Review it the same way, with one extra question: which Module 2 did each student reach? See running a class mock and the exam-day checklist.
The teacher's week at a glance
| When | What | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Assign this week's set, due Wednesday | 10 min |
| Thursday | Gradebook, replays, Colorbook AI analysis | 30 min |
| Friday | Check adaptive sets have gone out | 5 min |
| Saturday | Live lesson built on Thursday's findings | the lesson |
| Monthly | Class mock instead of the Monday set | the sitting + 45 min review |
Building a library as you go
The routine gets easier each term if you keep what works.
My questions
Questions you keep go into My questions, your own bank, labelled by topic. Labels are what let you draw a topic set, or a mock, from your own material later. The bank holds 200 questions on Free, 500 on Coach, 2,000 on Classroom and an unlimited number on Academy. Ten minutes a week of labelling and removing duplicates is enough to keep it useful.
The set marketplace
When you need a topic you have no material for, the marketplace sells ready-made sets written by Colorbook to exam accuracy. You buy a set once, and on Academy it is shared across the whole team, so a department does not pay for the same set several times.
What to watch for
- Do not skip Thursday. Assigning sets without reviewing them is the most common way this routine fails. If time is short, cut the Monday set to 10 questions rather than skipping the review.
- Keep sets short. A finished 15-question set teaches you more than an abandoned 40.
- Do not mock too often. A full mock takes a morning to sit and time to review. Monthly is usually enough; more often leaves little time to act on what the last one showed.
Questions teachers ask
- How long does this routine take each week?
- About 45 minutes outside lessons: 10 minutes to assign a set, about 30 to review the gradebook, replays and analysis, and a few minutes to check adaptive sets.
- Which plans include adaptive sets?
- Classroom includes 3 adaptive class sets a week. Academy includes those and 3 adaptive sets per student a week.
- How often should a class sit a mock?
- About once a month is usually enough. It leaves time to review each mock and act on it before the next.
- Can lessons appear in my own calendar?
- Yes. The timetable offers a calendar feed you can subscribe to in your calendar app.
Assign, review, teach live and run mocks, all in the test screen your students will sit.
See Colorbook for EducatorsMore for teachers
- Colorbook for Educators: your worksheets, in a real digital SAT test screen
- From PDF to practice set: turning worksheets into tests students can sit
- Running a class mock: starting together, scheduling, question sources and timing
- Tutor mode: teaching live on the student's own test screen
- Replays and analysis: seeing how students worked, not just what they scored