You are going to teach with LessonUp for the first time. That's exciting! It's actually very easy to teach with LessonUp. Let's go through some practical tips that will help increase your confidence.

During teaching, you can use the options that you can view in the black bar at the bottom of your screen. We will guide you through the most important ones.

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. Generative language models like ChatGPT (part of OpenAI) learn from data and patterns, which allows them to become smarter over time. As a result, they can formulate answers to questions and adapt to the context of a conversation.

At LessonUp, we have embedded a language model in our platform. Maia fulfills teacher-centred assignments based on your input. For example: you want a lesson on the subject of geography, the topic being 'environmental pollution', based on a specific learning objective? Additionally, you also want to activate your students' prior knowledge and encourage self-reflection at the end?

Engaging learning techniques involve students actively participating in the learning process. This can lead to increased engagement and better learning outcomes, something every teacher desires! Engaging learning techniques can include activities where students collaborate, discuss, present, solve problems, or work independently. In these techniques, students actively process the learning material and are encouraged to contribute with their own insights.

Engaging learning techniques are important because they contribute to students' learning processes. Students are stimulated to actively engage with the learning material, which enhances their understanding and retention of the content. Engaging techniques also promote collaboration among students, develop communication skills, and foster critical thinking. Additionally, using engaging learning techniques brings more variety to your lessons, making them more interesting for students. By increasing student engagement and motivation the learning process becomes more enjoyable and effective.

In a LessonUp lesson, you can easily add interactive questions to actively engage your students during your lessons. Below, we explain all interactive elements along with a short instructional video.

With a quiz question during a classroom lesson, you can quickly assess students by using a game-like element. The nature of a quiz question is often to assess student understanding. Quiz questions can be used throughout the entire lesson: as a lesson starter to catch pupils' interest, to assess knowledge retention, or to evaluate learning outcomes. In the video, Joy explains how you can use a quiz question in your LessonUp lesson.

With components in LessonUp, you can add extra (interactive) functionalities to your lesson. The convenience of components is that you can add them as individual elements to your slide; they are not embedded in an entire slide like the interactive question forms. Additionally, not all components require an extra device like a phone or a laptop.Below are the components you can add to your LessonUp lesson. We will guide you through our 4 more complex interactive components.

With the 'Hotspot' component, you can place interactive buttons anywhere on your slide. Hotspots allow you to add an additional layer of retrievable information. This article provides a step-by-step explanation of how to add a hotspot to your lesson, and of the settings you can use to do so.

There are different ways to track the progress of your students in LessonUp. By using modules, you can have a global overview of the classroom and of the distributed lessons for each class, the number of students who participated, and how far they have progressed in the lesson. The reports provide a comprehensive insight into the responses given by the entire class, lesson, or by individual students.👑 Please note: These functionalities are only available in a pro or school subscription. Check here to see which subscription you are working with.

Lesson modules are particularly useful because they enable a structured distribution of lessons to students by organising them within a module or chapter. Students can easily find lessons saved in modules by looking for them in their LessonUp accounts.

The design of your first slide already significantly influences students' engagement with the lesson. Motivation is crucial; did you know that a student looks at his/her phone on average 2,000 times a day? All in all, keeping students' attention is quite a challenge. A lesson's design can provide students with structure and recognition, which positively impact attention levels during the lesson.In this lesson plan, you will learn more about layout options, about using imagery, and making your lesson unique. We have many more design tips, which is why we have divided this topic into two lesson plans. For more tips, continue reading in part 2!

When you add a slide to your LessonUp lesson, there are 9 default layout options to choose from. These options are very convenient if you want to quickly create a slide without much thought.If you desire more freedom in designing your lesson, choose the blank layout, represented by the box in the bottom-right corner. With this option, you can flexibly work with components within the slide, such as a text box or an image box, and place them wherever you prefer.

Gamification is the incorporation of game elements into a non-game context, such as education. The goal is to motivate and engage students by using game elements, such as earning points, badges, or levels. Gamification can help students stay motivated and engaged with the learning material. By applying game elements to the lesson, students can learn in a fun and challenging way. It can also create positive and healthy competition among students, encouraging them to perform at their best.

In LessonUp, there are many game formats that you can use in your lessons, whether for the whole class, individual students, or teams. Here are 6 formats you can apply in your lessons. Click on the 'links' at the bottom to access the LessonUp lesson "Gamification" for instructions on how to use these formats, and how to copy the game slides to your own lesson: