Overview
What are Standalone Activities?
Until now, running a single activity in Kira meant creating a full lesson to hold it — cluttering your library with one-off lessons for tasks that only take a few minutes. Standalone Activities change that.
A Standalone Activity is exactly what it sounds like: one activity, created on its own, without a lesson wrapper. You set the standards, skills, and rubric at the activity level, assign it to students, grade it, and release results — all through the same workflows you already use. Student scores flow into their profiles automatically, just like lesson-based activities do.
No new permissions needed. Any teacher who can create lessons today can create standalone activities right away.
Activity types
Five types available at launch
All five already run end-to-end inside lessons — the standalone path reuses that same proven behavior.
Interactive Video
Read and Respond
Speak Aloud
Action Tiles
Whiteboard
For teachers
What's new and how it works
Creating an activity
Start from two places: the new Activity Studio section under AI Tools on the homepage, or the homepage AI chat.
Use the AI chat to describe what you want in plain language — for example, "make a Speak Aloud activity for 'the quick brown fox' for 2nd graders" — and get a previewable card inline. Open it in the editor with content already populated.
The editor is the same one you already know — the block palette and outline panel are hidden so you stay focused on the single activity. Undo, Redo, Settings, and Ask Kira AI are all still there.
Standards, skills, and rubric
Tag standards, skills, and a rubric once at the activity level. That single tag is what lets even a three-minute formative check contribute to a student's mastery picture.
Publishing and assigning
Same Draft → Published lifecycle as lessons.
Familiar three-step assign wizard: Who, When, and Advanced Settings — with only the settings relevant to the activity type shown.
Library and grading
Standalone Activities is a top-level filter in your library, with a nested filter for each of the five activity types. Duplicating creates an independent fork.
Students see activities in their assignment list with an activity type chip (not "Lesson") and complete them using the same per-activity players.
Grade from the gradebook with a distinct column treatment, type-specific detail, rubric panel, AI feedback, and grade release — just like lessons.
Profile rollup
Scores still flow into student and class profiles
Graded, tagged activities propagate standard and skill evidence to student and class profiles automatically. Each entry carries an activity type badge so you can tell at a glance what kind of evidence it came from — a lesson or a standalone check.
Course generation
Works with AI course generation too
Course Generation is aware of standalone activities. When you generate a course with AI, Kira can automatically mix standalone activities in alongside lessons. You review and adjust everything before the course is created.
You can also drop a standalone activity into a blank course yourself — the same way you'd add a lesson.