Your rubric captures the criteria and their weights, but not the material you grade against: the reading the class analyzed, the citation guide you enforce, the wrong answers you deduct for every year, or the topic list your league pre-approves. Supporting material is the place to hand that to the assistant. It reads what you add against every paper graded on the rubric, so you explain the standard once instead of re-explaining it every batch.
Where to find it
Supporting material lives in Grader settings, in the Your guidance group. Grader settings has a door wherever you work with the grader:
- On a paper's grading page, choose the gear icon beside the AI controls.
- On the assignment page, choose the gear icon in the submissions toolbar.
- In the rubric builder, the AI column header opens the same panel.
The material belongs to the rubric, not the assignment. Use the same rubric next term and everything you added comes with it.
Pick the right block type
Choose Add block and pick the type that matches what you are handing over. The type matters: each one carries a fixed rule that tells the assistant how it may use the material, and those rules are the difference between context and clutter.
- Reading assignment: the set text students wrote about. The assistant judges the paper against it as a reference, never as required wording.
- Reference materials: a guide or source the grader may draw on, such as a citation manual, a style sheet, or a league's approved topic list. Again reference, not required wording. This is also the right place for a note like "topics come from a pre-approved list, so do not question topic choice."
- Wrong answers: a list of the mistakes you always deduct for. Each entry may deduct only against the criterion it names, and the assistant can never invent a new deduction from the list.
- Feedback cues: comments in your own words, each with a trigger. When a trigger matches, your exact wording is surfaced verbatim, never paraphrased.
- Other / general context: anything that fits none of the above, passed along with no special handling.
Everything here autosaves as you type. There is no save button to find.
Paste it or upload it
The body types (reading, reference, and other) take pasted text, or a file: choose Upload a file and give it a PDF, docx, or txt. The file is read to text on the spot; a long document is condensed once so it fits alongside everything else the grader reads. Wrong answers and feedback cues are typed as short entries and are never condensed or reworded, because their exact wording is the point.
The context budget
A meter at the bottom shows how much room your material takes out of the budget the grader can carry. If it goes over, trim or condense a block before the rubric grades again; the meter turns red so you can see which side of the line you are on.
What it does not do
- Students never see it. Supporting material shapes grading; it does not appear on reports or anywhere student-facing.
- Web links are not followed. A pasted URL is just text to the assistant. Paste the content itself, or upload the document, and refresh it yourself when the source changes.
- It applies to the whole rubric. Every paper graded on the rubric is read against all of it; there is no per-criterion switch.
- Whole graded papers do not belong here. A model answer or a scored exemplar is a calibration paper: see Calibrating grading to your standards.
To confirm exactly what the assistant receives, open Full prompt at the bottom of the same panel: your supporting material appears there word for word, in the prompt the grader actually reads.