Teachers are able to customize Quill Lessons – our synchronous, teacher-led instructional activity – to better suit the needs of their whole-class and small-group instruction. You can customize a Quill Lesson before you launch the Lesson. Some examples of how you may customize the Lesson include:
Align prompts to material that you are discussing in class, such as books you are reading in class, or material that is more relatable for the students.
Change the prompts to ones that better suit their skill level.
Reword or clarify directions and objectives to fit with your classroom lesson structures.
First, assign a Quill Lesson to your classes. After you have assigned the Lesson, you can customize the slides!
Table of Contents:
Access from the Teacher Dashboard
To customize a Quill Lesson from the Teacher Dashboard:
Log into your Quill account
Scroll down on the homepage to the “Present a live lesson” section
Click the three dots next to a Lesson’s name
Select “Customize”
You will be brought to the customization page. Click the “Customize” button, then select “Make a copy”.
Then, name the edition of your Lesson. After you name the edition, click the “Start Customizing” button.
Access from My Activities
To customize a Lesson from the My Activities tab:
Click the “My Activities” tab
Click the “Launch Lessons” link underneath the “My Activities” tab
Click the magic wand icon next to a Lesson’s name
You will be brought to the customization page. Click the “Customize” button, then select “Make a copy”.
Then, name the edition of your Lesson. After you name the edition, click the “Start Customizing” button.
Customization Interface
At the top of the page, you can rename the edition of the Lesson and enter a sample question. Sample questions will help you identify editions before you launch them.
Scroll down to find an outline of the Lesson. On the left side of the screen, you can click into the box and add or remove text. On the right side of the screen, you will see a preview of what the slide will look like for your students.
Slide Type
A static text slide only provides text on the screen. There is no teacher model or student practice option. These are great slides to put objectives, example sentences, or review the grammar concept!
The teacher model slides are the slides where you will type your example sentences and they will appear on student devices in real-time. The prompt box is where you type the question or sentences that need to be revised. The instructions box is where you type the instructions for the question. The joining words box is where you type example and non-example conjunctions that could be used in the sentence. Make sure you separate each joining word with a comma!
The students practice slides are the names for any slide that students will type a response into. On the left side of the screen, you will see paired practice and individual practice. Although the format of these slides is the same, the way students engage with the content will be different. Students will work with a partner or group member on the paired practice slides, and students will work independently on the individual practice slides.
The prompt box is where you type the question or sentences that need to be revised. The instructions box is where you type the instructions for the question. The joining words box is where you type example and non-example conjunctions that could be used in the sentence. The prefilled text box is where you can type a sentence stem that will appear for students to use in their responses.
Edit Features
The clear slide button removes all text from the slide.
The reset slide button reverts the slide back to its original text.
The bold, italicize, and underline buttons are available to emphasize certain aspects of the text.
The quote button inserts a gray text box for you to input a quote, question, or grammar rule.
Once you have made all the changes you would like to, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Publish Edition” button.
To preview your customized Lesson, click the “View My Edition” button.
After you have previewed the Lesson, click the “Save and Exit” button at the top of the screen.
Next Steps
Once you have customized your Quill Lesson, you are ready to launch the lesson with your students! Make sure to choose your published version on the lesson launch screen, which will be indicated by the “My Customized Editions” heading.
Check out the resources below for more information on using Quill Lessons:
Have more questions?
Please feel free to live chat with us through the green message bubble on the bottom right corner of the screen or email us at hello@quill.org.