Building a lesson

Sidebar → Teaching → Lessons. Everything you teach a class, kept together: the notes and files, the homework and quizzes, the notices and the live classes.

How it is organised

Pick a class and a subject. Inside that slot is a list of lessons, in the order your students see them — "Photosynthesis", "Revision for mocks", "Term 2 notes".

A lesson holds four kinds of thing: materials, homework and quizzes, notices, and live classes. The list shows what is inside each one, and how many of the class have started it.

If you add something without choosing a lesson, it goes into a General lesson for that slot, created the first time it is needed. You do not have to organise before you can share. Materials can be moved between lessons later, so a General lesson that grows can be tidied up afterwards rather than planned upfront.

Choose New lesson to add one. Use the search box to find a lesson by name, and Show archived to see ones you have put away.

Opening a lesson

Select a lesson and everything in it is on one page — what students will learn, its materials, its homework and quizzes, its notices, its live classes, and how far the class has got. There are no tabs to click through to find out what a lesson contains.

Published or Draft is the switch at the top. A draft lesson is invisible to students, which is how you build one over a few evenings before the class sees it.

Adding to a lesson

Add to lesson offers the four things a lesson can hold:

Homework opens the same composer as the Assessments tab, already on this lesson's class and subject, and what you assign is added to the lesson. After adding a material you are offered Set homework on this, which carries the lesson forward so the form starts half filled.

Three kinds of material

Files are up to 10 MB each. That is comfortable for notes and a slide deck; an unoptimised scan of a whole textbook will not fit, and should probably be a link anyway.

Who can see it — the important part

Every material is either for students or staff only. This is the whole point of the feature, so get it right:

• Students — appears in the student portal for that class
• Staff only — visible to colleagues in the console, never to students

Mark schemes, answer keys and question banks go in staff only. A staff-only file is not merely hidden from the student portal; students cannot reach it at all.

If you are unsure, ask whether it would matter if a student opened it tonight.

Editing and tidying up

Select a material's title to read it in full, with Download or Open link where that applies. Its ⋯ menu offers Edit to correct the title, note, link or audience, Replace file to upload a new version without deleting the material first, Move to another lesson, and Delete.

Sharing with several classes

If you teach the same subject to more than one class, you can share to all of them at once when you add a material. Each class gets its own copy, so you can later change or remove it for one class without touching the others.

To copy something you have already added, open it and choose Copy to another class. The copy goes into a lesson with the same name and keeps the same audience. Restore an archived destination lesson before copying into it.

What you are allowed to write

You can add to a class and subject you actually teach — or to your form class. Being able to see a slot does not mean you can write to it.

If you cannot add to a slot you expect to, your class or subject assignment is missing from your staff record. See Why you only see your own classes — your administrator fixes it in People → Staff.

Heads, exams officers and administrators can write anywhere.

Live classes

Add to lesson → Live class schedules a Meet, Zoom or Teams session. Add the HTTPS join link, the start time and anything students should bring.

Students see a Join button from 15 minutes before the start until the session ends — not before, so next week's lesson does not look like it is happening now, and not forever afterwards. Cancel a session from the lesson when plans change; a cancelled one cannot be joined.

Nothing is streamed through the school system: students open the link in their own Meet or Zoom app. For a recording or an always-available video, add an ordinary material instead — scheduled meetings belong in Live classes.

Notices

Add to lesson → Notice posts a short message to the class and pins it to the lesson. It is an ordinary class announcement, so it also appears under Announcements in the sidebar (Messages → Announcements for an admin), which is still the one place to see them all.

Editing a notice later does not move it back to the top or notify anyone again.

Renaming, archiving and deleting a lesson

The ⋯ menu beside Add to lesson acts on the lesson itself:

• Rename lesson — corrects the name students see
• Archive lesson — puts it away without losing anything. It disappears from the list and from the student portal; Show archived brings it back into view, and Restore lesson returns it for good
• Delete lesson — permanent, and asks you to confirm first

Deleting takes the lesson's materials and live classes with it. Homework, quizzes and notices are not deleted: they are unlinked and stay on the Assessments tab and under Announcements. Archive rather than delete if you may want the lesson next year.

Your school shares one storage allowance across all materials and announcement attachments. If uploads start being refused, that is the reason — delete what is no longer needed, or ask your administrator.