Quill Lessons enables teachers to lead whole-class and small-group writing instruction. Teachers control interactive slides that contain writing prompts, and the entire class responds to each prompt. Each Quill Lessons activity provides a lesson plan, writing prompts, discussion topics, and a follow-up independent practice activity.

This video provides a brief overview of Quill Lessons, including how to navigate the slides and the various features built into the tool.

To assign a Quill Lesson:

From there, you can search for the type of lesson you are hoping to assign by typing it into the search bar or using additional filters. Once you find the concept you are looking to teach, you can preview, select, and assign the lesson to your classes.

As soon as you assign the lesson, you can review the lesson plan on your teacher dashboard. To access the lesson plan:

The lesson plan will list each of the prompts and suggested discussion topics. If you would like, you can print out the PDF and annotate the discussion questions to use during the lesson. Here's a sample lesson plan PDF.

In order to use a Quill Lesson with your students, you must launch the lesson. To launch a Quill Lesson:

Once you launch the lesson, students can click the "Join lesson” button that appears. On your view of the Quill Lesson, you will see how many of your students have joined.

Note: If students see a “Needs teacher” message on their dashboards, the lesson has not been launched yet.

Throughout the lesson, you can use the “watch teacher” button, which pauses student screens and instructs students to redirect their attention to you. You can turn "Watch teacher" mode on to ensure students cannot see the content of slides and redirect their attention to you. Then, click the icon to turn "Watch teacher" mode off to allow students to view the lesson again.

When your students come to the first question, they will be prompted to enter an answer. You can then select a few strong answers to project to your students by checking the box under “Select to Display”, then click “Display Selected Answers.”

For each individual practice slide, you can project strong student answers to help the students discuss and understand the material. After sharing a few strong answers, click the circular arrows button, which allows all students to start over and submit a new response.

During the lesson, you may notice that a few students could receive additional support or practice in applying the concepts. Use the flag button to mark these students for follow-up practice. As you progress through the slides, some of your flagged students may demonstrate mastery and others may not.

At the end of the lesson, you will have the following options:

Select the option you would like, then click the button at the bottom of the page that appears with your selection.

Ask your small group to write down a few of the prompts from your Quill Lessons PDF in their notebooks or on a whiteboard and walk through the process with them once again. Engage each student in a discussion around improving one another's answers. As your small group works, you can provide personalized feedback based on your students' responses. During the small group instruction, the rest of your class can work independently on their follow-up activity.

You can also use gradual release or the “I do/We do/You do” model with your small group. Model how to use the concept, then have students work on the concept together, then have students work on the concept independently before they begin their follow-up practice in Quill.

Once your students have completed the lesson, you will need to mark the lesson as complete to officially close the lesson. When you assign follow-up practice within the lesson, the lesson will automatically be marked as complete.

Then, you can click the “Exit Lesson | View Report” button to view the Activity Analysis report of the lesson.

If you exited the lesson before assigning follow-up practice, though, you can mark the lesson as complete by:

Then, you can view the report by clicking the “View Report” button that appears.

Please feel free to send a message to the Quill team using the green message bubble on the bottom right corner of the screen or email us at support@quill.org.