Create the most engaging interactive lessons with LessonUp
Thomas Courtley
Education Specialist
Say goodbye to a millions open screens on your computer! 👋
LessonUp offers 10+ interactive assessment features that you can add to your digital lessons: quiz questions, open questions, photo questions, mind maps, and drag and drop questions, spinners, hotspots, and more. Each one engages learners in a different way, awakening a different set of skills, and collecting a wealth of formative assessment data on each individual student.
The pedagogy behind some of our interactive features
Quiz question
In LessonUp, quiz questions can be implemented throughout your lesson, serving as lesson starters or as hinge questions at targeted moments. While there is no maximum limit for quizzes, we recommend creating between 5 and 10 quizzes per lesson to maintain the attention and engagement of your students.
Quizzes can also be designed as right/wrong or true/false questions. To achieve this, leave two answer options blank while creating the quiz; they won't be visible during your lesson. This type of quiz question is ideal for activating your students' knowledge after reading a text or watching a video together.
Mind map
LessonUp's mind map is a particularly beloved component. Many teachers use it to activate students' prior knowledge. By activating your students' prior knowledge, you create space for them to digest and retain new information. According to Ausubel's theory of meaningful learning (1968), prior knowledge is integrated into the learner's working memory alongside new information, facilitating its absorption.
Although the concept of a mind map is almost as old as education, LessonUp's digital version offers many advantages. For instance, you can ensure your students' responses are anonymous, or not. In that case, the student's name will appear next to the answer. You can also delete inappropriate responses by dragging them to the trash bin. The wealth of your students' knowledge is secure and always retrievable.
Open question
An open question offers the best opportunity to provide unique and engaging discussions. Whereas a quiz question is mostly ideal for reviewing lessons and topics, an open-ended question can give more layers of depth to new and old subjects. Students are able to provide a unique and comprehensive answer, in their own writing style. The answers are displayed as clickable digital cards that put teachers in control.
Using a digital open question eliminates the need for students to put up their hands—it allows quieter students to participate. A range of open questions can be a powerful exit ticket plenary.
Drag and drop question
The drag and drop question in LessonUp offers the most unique interactivity as it physically requires students to drag and drop elements to the correct target/s. With the drag and drop question, you can provide different variations of learning: reviewing event timelines, activating vocabulary, or connecting themes and terms. The first time you make the drag and drop question it takes some learning time, but students love working with it to provide the correct answer/s.
The drag and drop combines formative assessment with learning through play, offering a dynamic and interactive approach to evaluating students' understanding. This type of interactive assignment enhances the learning experience.
Interactive features at the end of a lesson
Exit ticket plenary
It is important to evaluate the lesson and the achievement its learning objectives. To do this, you can use an 'exit ticket' by creating two to three open-ended questions, or a poll. The open-ended questions stimulates students to think about what they’ve learnt during the lesson, what they haven't completely understood, and helps them think about potential questions to understand a topic better. Hereunder follow some examples:
👉 'Write down three things you've learnt during this lesson.'
👉 'Ask one question about a topic that was not 100% clear.'
This information helps you give your students targeted feedback. In addition, by using the poll as an 'exit ticket' you can check how students feel about what they have learnt.
Different ways of encouraging student participation
How do students participate in LessonUp?
Click on Teach to start presenting a lesson. Each lesson has a unique numeric code. The six-digit pin code is valid during the whole lesson and for all interactive parts. Students just need one pin code per lesson. The pin is always visible at the bottom left corner, but also appears on the screen as an interactive assessment is about to start. Students are encouraged enter this six-digit code into the LessonUp app (free on iOS and Android) or via the link lessonup.app. In the next screen, students are asked to enter their name. You can easily delete inappropriate names by clicking on the 'X' next to a name.
Ranking or not?
In LessonUp, it's possible to turn off the student ranking feature. The most common reason to do this is is to avoid putting unnecessary pressure on students. In the presentation view (accessed by clicking on 'Teach'), click on the six-digit pin code at the bottom left. A screen will appear with the option 'Show ranking'. You can remove the checkmark next to 'Show ranking' to disable the ranking feature and continue with your lesson.Â
Disabling devices during a lesson
LessonUp provides you with the opportunity to turn on or off student devices. If you decide to turn off devices, students can no longer participate by using their smartphones, tablets, or laptops but can still engage with you and the lesson displayed on the interactive whiteboard. You or a student can now mediate physical and verbal interactions with the support of a LessonUp lesson showing on the whiteboard.
You can find this function in the presentation view (accessed by clicking on 'Teach'), at the bottom of the screen. By unchecking the box 'Student devices,' the use of devices in LessonUp is turned off. Note that turning off this feature applies to every lesson you teach after unchecking the box.
Last, but not least!
All interactive features can, of course, be created by you. However, there are thousands of elements in LessonUp that can be used or adapted to your own goals. Pre-made lessons made by others, e.g. from a variety of interesting content creators, are also great for inspiration. Save these lessons in your own account and see how you can add them to your best practice!
