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 key words in the Search for concepts, activities, and more field or check additional filters to find the Quill Lesson that you would like to assign. Once you find a Quill Lesson you would like to assign, you can preview, select, and assign the Quill Lesson to your classes.

As soon as you assign a Quill Lesson, you can review the Quill Lesson plan. The Quill Lesson plan will list each of the prompts and suggested discussion topics within the Quill Lesson. If you would like, you can print out the PDF and annotate the discussion questions to use during the Quill Lesson. Here's a sample Quill Lesson plan PDF.

There are two ways to access the Quill Lesson plan.

1. On the Overview page in the Home tab...

a. Scroll to the section titled, Present a live lesson and click the three dots next to the Quill Lesson's name.

b. Click Download Lesson Plan.

2. On the Launch Lessons page in the My Activities tab.

a. Hover over and click the Download Lesson Plan icon to the far right of the Quill Lesson's name.

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

Once you launch the Quill Lesson, students will be able to click the Join the lesson button that appears on their student dashboards. In your view of the Quill Lesson, you will see how many of your students have joined the Quill Lesson

Throughout the Quill Lesson, you can use the Watch Teacher button in the upper right corner of the page, which pauses student screens and instructs students to redirect their attention to you. You can turn the Watch Teacher mode on to ensure that students cannot see the content of slides and redirect their attention to you. Then, when you want students to view the Quill Lesson again, click the icon to turn the Watch Teacher mode off.

On student practice slides, students will be prompted to enter a response. When students submit responses, you can select a few responses to display to your students by checking the box within the Select to Display column that corresponds with the responses and then clicking the Display Selected Answers button.

As mentioned, for each student practice slide, you can display selected student answers to encourage your students to discuss and understand the material. After displaying and discussing some answers, if there are some students who did not correctly use the relevant writing skill, click the circular arrows icon in the Have Student Retry column to the far right of these students' names, which will allow these students to start over and submit a new response.

During the Quill Lesson, you may notice that a few students could benefit from receiving additional support or practice in applying the relevant writing concepts. Use the flag icon in the Flag column 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 a Quill Lesson, you will have the following options:

Select the option that you would like to use and click the button that corresponds with your selection at the bottom of the page.

Ask your small group to write down a few of the prompts from your Quill Lesson plan in their notebooks or on a whiteboard and walk through the process of writing responses to these prompts with them. 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. While you are working with your small group, the rest of your class can work on their follow-up independent-practice 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, and then have students work on the concept independently before they begin their follow-up practice activity.

Once your students have completed a Quill Lesson, you will need to mark the Quill Lesson as complete to officially close it.

When you assign follow-up practice immediately after the Quill Lesson, the Quill Lesson will automatically be marked as complete.

Then, you can click the Exit Lesson | View Report button to view the Activity Analysis report for the Quill Lesson.

If you exited the Quill Lesson before assigning follow-up practice, you can mark the Quill Lesson as complete by first navigating to Launch Lessons page in the My Activities tab.

Find the Quill Lesson that you would like to mark complete and click the Mark As Complete link to the right of the Quill Lesson's name.

Once you mark a Quill Lesson complete, you can view the Activity Analysis report by clicking the View Report button that appears to the right of the Quill Lesson's name.

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.