Lessons and activities

Opening a stage opens a lesson. A lesson is a short sequence of activities — you move through them one at a time, and finishing the last one completes the stage.

The lesson player shows how many activities there are and which one you are on, so you always know how much is left.

The rhythm of a lesson

Most lessons follow the same shape:

1. Watch or read — the idea is introduced.
2. Try — you do something with it.
3. Answer — questions check you have it.
4. Celebrate — the stage completes.

The middle two are where the learning happens. It is possible to click through the first and last and feel like you have done a lesson; you will not have.

The kinds of activity

The portal has a wide range of activity types, and which you meet depends on the subject and your tier. Younger learners get more tapping, drawing and listening; older ones get more reading and typing.

Watching and reading

Activity	What you do
Watch	A video.
Interactive video	A video that stops and asks you something.
Read	A passage to read.
Story scene	An illustrated story you move through.
Scene reel	A sequence of scenes with narration.

Answering

Activity	What you do
Quiz	Standard questions.
Tap select	Tap the right one.
Multi select	Choose all that apply — more than one is right.
True or false	Decide.
Fill the blank	Type or choose the missing word.
Compare	Which is bigger, longer, more.
Count	Count what you see.
Number line	Place a number where it belongs.

Doing

Activity	What you do
Drag and match	Drag things to their pairs.
Sort into buckets	Put each item in the right group.
Sequence	Put steps in the right order.
Label a diagram	Put the labels in the right places.
Hotspot	Find and tap the right part of a picture.
Memory pairs	Match pairs from memory.
Colour in	Colour a picture.
Draw	Draw an answer.
Trace	Trace a letter, number or shape — guided or free.
Practical	Do something away from the screen and record what happened.

Speaking and listening

Activity	What you do
Speak	Say it out loud.
Listen and type	Hear it, write it.
Audio match	Match a sound to a picture or word.

Practical activities are worth a note: they ask you to do something in the real world — measure something, plant something, try an experiment — and then record what happened. They are not optional decoration, and they are usually the activity you remember a year later.

Getting things wrong

Wrong answers are part of it. In most activities you can try again, and the portal explains rather than just marking you down.

What you get wrong is recorded, and it is what the recommendations are built from. A lesson you struggled with will come back around. That is the system working, not punishing you.

Stopping and coming back

Progress is saved as you finish each activity, so you can stop and return without losing what you did.

If you lose your connection in the middle of an activity, that activity may need redoing. The ones you already finished are safe.

Sound and devices

Many activities read instructions aloud, and speaking and listening activities need a microphone.

• Check the device is not muted.
• Allow the microphone when the browser asks, or speaking activities cannot work.
• Headphones help in a classroom of thirty.

A tablet or phone is often better than a laptop for tracing, drawing and dragging.