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.

As mentioned earlier, too much text on a slide can be confusing. One solution is to animate your text to fly in.To do this, click on the magic wand button. Read this article to learn how to animate text.

A slide filled with images can also become overwhelming. A handy solution are LessonUp's Hotspots (clickable icons containing imagery, text, or more). You can link a hotspot to an image, making it appear and collapse as needed. Read more about using hotspots in your lesson.Tip: hotspots are great for adding extra explanations to your slide. Check here to see how it works.