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A fill-in-the-blank activity is a passage with gaps for students to complete. Answers are graded automatically the moment a student submits, and each blank can accept several forms of the same answer.
In the app this activity type is labeled Fill in the Blank.

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Try it live

Complete a finished passage set and see the instant grading and hints. Nothing you submit is saved. Every example is a real activity in read-only mode, no account needed.

The Water Cycle

Three passages, fifteen blanks, a hint on every one.

All live examples

One example for every activity type, with more on the way.

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Building a passage

1

Create the activity

From your dashboard choose New Activity, then Fill in the Blank. Pick a classroom, or leave it as a temporary activity.
2

Write or paste your passage

Use the passage editor to write the text. You can format with bold, italic, underline, links, and bulleted or numbered lists.
3

Insert your blanks

Put the cursor where a gap belongs and choose Insert blank. A numbered placeholder appears in the passage.
Inserting a blank does not capture the word you’ve selected — the placeholder is added at the cursor and the text stays as it is. Delete the word you’re blanking out yourself, then type its answer in the blanks table (next step).
4

Fill in the answers table

Below the passage, each numbered blank gets a row where you enter its accepted answers, an optional hint, and its point value. Separate multiple accepted answers with commas — matching ignores capitalization.
5

Choose your settings, then save

Set whether to shuffle the passage order, whether hints are available to students, whether to show students their score, and a passing score if you want one. You can also password-protect the activity. Use Preview to try it as a student, then Save passage and Save settings.
One activity can hold several passages — use Add passage to build a multi-part exercise rather than creating separate activities.

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How answers are graded

Grading runs server-side as soon as a student submits.
  • Exact matches (ignoring capitalization) against any of your accepted answers score full points.
  • Near misses score 75%. ChimeEdu automatically allows small spelling slips — roughly one character for short answers, or up to a quarter of the answer’s length for longer ones. The student sees “Close!” rather than a plain wrong. This tolerance is always on and can’t be switched off, so bear it in mind when spelling itself is the thing you’re testing.
  • Everything else scores zero.
Matching is whole-answer, not partial. An answer with extra words around the target won’t be accepted unless it falls inside the spelling tolerance — so if several phrasings are valid, list each one as an accepted answer.

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Hints

If you add a hint to a blank, students can reveal it themselves from an icon beside that input. Hints are only available when the activity’s show hints setting is on.
Using a hint doesn’t cost the student any points, and hint usage isn’t recorded.

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Seeing student work

Open the activity and choose View results (beside Edit passages). The results page lists every completed attempt, newest first, with the student’s score and percentage and a class average at the top. Select a student to see what they typed in each blank next to your accepted answer, marked Correct, Close (a near miss that earned 75%), Incorrect or No answer.
  • Use the search box to find a student by name.
  • Remove deletes one attempt — useful for a test run of your own. The student can complete the activity again.
  • Each submission is its own row, so a student who tries twice appears twice.
  • Attempts made without an account are removed automatically after 180 days. Attempts tied to a student’s account (graded work) are kept. If a student deletes their account, their name is replaced with Deleted user and their score stays, so your class average doesn’t change.
Names come from what the student typed when they started, so an attempt without a name shows as Unnamed student. For work that must be tied to a student’s account, turn on graded mode or use an assessment.
See it with a sample class: open the teacher view of The Water Cycle — ten fictional students, nothing you change is saved.

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Frequently asked

Once created, the activity is live — there’s no separate publish step. It appears in the Activities tab of the classroom you assigned it to, and you can share its link directly.
Not currently. The passage editor supports text formatting, links, and lists — headings and images aren’t available in it.
No fixed limit. Keep it readable — a passage that’s more gap than text is hard to work through.
Not today. Fill-in-the-blank activities are authored manually; ChimeEdu’s only AI feature is study guide drafting.
Yes — anyone with the link (and the password, if you set one) can complete the activity.