Planning a Lesson
The evening before the lesson, end to end — the plan and its objectives, the handout built block by block through a five-step wizard, the quiz inside it that marks itself, who sits next to whom and why, and the pupil who opens the whole thing at home the next night.
The two hours nobody buys school software for
A school buys a platform for the register, the report cards and the fees. Then a teacher uses it every evening for something nobody demonstrated: writing next Tuesday’s lesson, making the sheet the class will work from, deciding who sits where after what happened in Week 6, and putting all of it somewhere a child who was off sick can still reach it. That is this walkthrough. It follows one lesson — JSS 2A, Mathematics, Week 9, factorising quadratics — from a plan with objectives on it, through a handout composed block by block with a self-marking quiz at the end, past the seating chart and the groups the class is really made of, and out onto a pupil’s screen at nine o’clock the following night. Every screen is the real application.
On this page
The week in front of you
A teacher does not open the platform asking “what shall I plan?”. They open it because a timetable already told them they have JSS 2A for Mathematics on Tuesday, and the question is what state that class is in. So the planning starts on the two screens that answer that: the subject workspace, and the register of plans already written for it.
Where a teacher actually lands
The subject workspace, scoped to one subject rather than to everything this teacher does. Today’s lessons, the marks that have not been entered, the pupils whose scores are sliding — the context a plan is written against, on the screen the plan is written from.
The plans already written for this class
Every lesson plan for JSS 2A Mathematics, with the counts above the table coming from the server rather than from the rows on screen. Four statuses are visible at once, and they are the process: weeks already taught are published, this week’s is with the head of department for review, next week’s is still a draft, and one from last year’s scheme has been archived rather than deleted.
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Building what the class will read
A plan is for the teacher. A learning material is for the children — and it is the thing that turns “you were away, borrow someone’s notes” into “it is on your portal”. The flow that creates one is a five-step wizard, and every step of it lives at its own address, which is why all five appear below in order. Watch the address bar: after the first step it starts carrying a draft id, because the flow saved one without being asked.
The register it will join
Everything this teacher has published to JSS 2A, with the walkthrough’s own material sitting at the top as a draft. Class and subject here are filters and nothing more — a deliberate change, because they used to double as “where should the next one go?”, which made the answer to a question about a new material depend on a dropdown somebody had narrowed for a different reason.
Step 1 — where does this belong?
Class, then the subject within that class. It is asked here rather than inherited from the list behind it, and the two pickers are chained: changing the class clears the subject, because the new class does not necessarily teach the old one and a stale id would file the material against a subject these pupils do not take.
Step 2 — what is it?
Title, topic, week label and the scheduling. The address bar has changed: pressing Next saved a draft, so this panel is carrying a `materialId` the teacher never asked for. That is the point — the flow is safe to abandon halfway through, and a teacher interrupted at 10pm comes back to what they had.
Step 3 — what can they download?
The attachments: files uploaded straight from the desktop, links, and videos. Three kinds, because a school that can only attach PDFs ends up mailing YouTube links separately and losing them.
Step 4 — what will they read?
The part that makes this a lesson rather than an upload. The body is composed from blocks — prose, callouts, tables, steps, images, video, flashcards, and a quiz that marks itself — grouped into sections a pupil can collapse. This panel only exists once a draft has been saved, because blocks are rows on the server and cannot hang off a material that has no id.
Step 5 — ready to go out?
Everything built so far, on one panel, with the one sentence that matters underneath: nothing has reached students yet, and publishing is what sends it. A teacher can stop here and leave it in drafts — the material exists, the pupils simply cannot see it.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “Building what the class will read” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And who is sitting where
The last decision before the bell is the one that is never written down anywhere a colleague can find it: who sits next to whom. It matters most for the teacher who is not there — a cover teacher handed a class of thirty and a plan that assumes they know which two to keep apart.
Seating plans, and the rooms they are drawn in
Several plans per class, because one class is arranged differently for different work — rows for the test, tables of five for the investigation. Each plan is a saved document with its own grid, and the second tab holds the room templates the grids are drawn on, which are the school’s furniture rather than any one teacher’s arrangement.
Set this up for your team.
Every screen in “And who is sitting where” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
The same thirty children, from the form room
A subject teacher arranges a room for their subject. The form teacher owns the class itself, and keeps two things about it that every subject teacher then benefits from: the groups the class is really made of, and the home-room seating. Neither is a list of names — both are decisions, and both are the sort of thing that used to leave with the teacher who made them.
The groups a class is really made of
Not the register — the working sets. Extension, numeracy support, the reading intervention that is withdrawn on Thursdays. A child can be in more than one, and a group is membership by pupil rather than by seat, so it survives a reshuffle, a new subject teacher and a change of room.
The home-room seating
One arrangement for the class’s own room, saved against the class rather than as a document of its own. Simpler than the subject teacher’s plans, and deliberately so — this is the default a supply teacher, an invigilator or a new colleague should find without asking anybody.
Ready to run your school on this?
Every screen in “The same thirty children, from the form room” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
And then a child opens it at home
Everything above cost a teacher an evening. This is the only screen that proves it bought anything — and it is the screen the argument for the whole flow rests on, because a pupil who was off sick on Tuesday can reach exactly what the class had, at nine o’clock the following night, without asking anybody for a photocopy.
What has been published to them
The pupil’s own library: everything their teachers have published across every subject they take, newest first, with what they have already started and what they have finished. Archived materials are simply not here — the pupil never sees a teacher’s filing.
Reading it
The material as it was composed: the objectives at the top, the worked examples, the downloads, and at the end the quiz — which marks itself, tells the pupil which one they got wrong and why, and, where the school has allowed it, posts the score straight into the teacher’s gradebook as its own assessment column.
See this on your own school’s data.
Every screen in “And then a child opens it at home” is the live product, not a mockup. Create your school account, or have us walk you through it on a call.
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