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Manage Lesson Plans & Activities

Create, edit, and build lessons plans with created activities

Adrian Ruiz avatar
Written by Adrian Ruiz
Updated over 2 months ago

Lesson plans serve as a teacher's daily roadmap, outlining what students need to learn, how the material will be taught, and how learning outcomes will be assessed. These plans consist of daily activities that help teachers stay organized and effective by providing a detailed guide for each class period.

💡 Lesson plans and activities can only be created on the web. However, teachers and admins can view them on mobile.

View Lesson Plans on Web

Admins can view lesson plans for each classroom for a particular week.

🚨 Staff can only see the lesson plans for their assigned classroom.

  1. From your Admin Dashboard, click Lessons and then Overview.
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  2. Your lesson plans for the current week will open.

  3. Click Week Of and use the calendar to select a different week to view.

View Lesson Plans and Activities on Mobile

Lesson plans and activities can be viewed on the mobile app, making it easy for teachers to reference the lesson plan while they are in the classroom.

  1. Open your Playground mobile app, tap the three lines at the top left corner of the screen, and tap Lesson Plans.
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  2. Today's lesson plan will open. Tap a date at the top of the screen to view the lesson plan for that day.

  3. Tap an activity to view the details and instructions.

  4. If you would like to post an observation for this activity, click Post in the top right corner of the screen.

Create and Edit Activities

Activities are the foundation of lesson plans. Add new activities to Playground so you can build out lesson plans.

View and/or Edit Activities

  1. From your Admin Dashboard, click Lessons and then Activities.
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  2. A full list of your activities will appear in a table.

  3. You can filter this list and/or add additional columns to the table.

  4. Click the three dots next to a lesson plan, and then click Edit or View.

  5. The activity will open, and you can view and/or edit it depending on your selection.

  6. Click Save to return to the full list of activities.

💡 Editing an activity will change that activity for all lesson plans it is included in.

Create a New Activity

  1. From your Admin Dashboard, click Lessons and then Activities.

  2. Click the blue New Activity button in the top right corner of your screen. Fill out the information in each section:

    1. Activity basics

      1. The name, brief description of the activity, and age range for the activity

    2. Additional information

      1. Information your staff will need to properly conduct the activity and/or test the student

    3. Resources

      1. Attach required resources such as a video, PDF file, or other media/documentation.

  3. Click Settings on the left side of the screen to assign the activity to a classroom.
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  4. Click Save to complete.

💡 Experiment with our beta feature, Autocomplete with AI, to have AI add details to your activity. Simply type the activity name and a brief description and AI will generate the activity details for you.

Create and Edit Lesson Plans

Prefer to watch a video? Click here.

Lesson plans are created week-by-week and are made up of activities.

  1. From your Admin Dashboard, click Lessons and then Lesson Plans.

  2. Click the blue New Lesson Plan button in the top-right corner of your screen.
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  3. Add the required information for the lesson plan:

    1. Lesson plan title: the title that will be visible to staff

    2. Week of: the week the lesson plan will take place

    3. Classroom: the classrooms this lesson plan should be visible to

  4. [Optional] Add a note for each day by typing in the text box that says Enter Note For The Day.

  5. Click on Add Row to start adding the activities you created to the lesson plan. Each row allows for a section title and one or more activities.

    1. To delete a section, click on the red Trash Can icon.

    2. To duplicate a section, click on the Multiple-box icon.
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  6. Click on + Add Activity under each day to add activities for that day.

    1. The Select Lesson Activity window will appear

      1. Search for the activity by the name you gave it.

      2. Click into the search bar to bring up all of your created activities.

      3. You can create new activities on the fly by clicking on Create New in the window.

  7. Select the activity you wish to add and click Save to add the activity to your lesson plan.

    1. You can view additional details about the lesson by clicking on the Eye icon

    2. To delete the activity, click the three dots and then click Remove.
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  8. Continue adding activities as many activities as you'd like.

  9. Click on Settings to customize your lesson plan.

    1. Show Weekends For This Lesson Plan: if your school is open on the weekends, select this option.

    2. Set the Teacher's Visibility.

      1. Editable - teachers can view and edit the lesson plan

      2. Visible - teachers can see the lesson plan but cannot edit it

      3. Hidden - teachers cannot see the lesson

  10. Click Save to create your lesson plan.

💡 You can edit a created lesson plan by clicking into the Lesson Plans tab and then clicking on the lesson plan you want to edit. Make sure to confirm edits made by clicking Save.

Approve Teacher Lesson Plans

Administrators can choose to require approval for lesson plans teachers create before they can be used. This setting can be found in General Settings under Teacher Permissions.

If the lesson plan approval setting is turned on, you will see three tabs on the Lesson Plan screen:

Approved

Lesson plans you've created or approved.

Pending Approval

Lesson plans your teachers have submitted for approval.

Rejected

Lesson plans you've rejected.

Approve or Reject Lesson Plans

  1. From your Admin Dashboard, click Lessons and then Lesson Plans.

  2. Click the Pending Approval tab. A red number will appear to indicate how many lesson plans require review.

  3. Click the three dots next to the lesson plan you want to approve, then select Approve.

  4. The lesson plan will move to the Approved tab and can now be used by teachers.

Lesson Plan Settings

To access settings for one of your lesson plans, follow the steps below:

  1. From your Admin Dashboard, click Lessons, Lesson Plans, and click into one of your lesson plans.

  2. Select the white Settings button in the top right corner of your screen.

    1. To include Saturday and Sunday to your lesson plan, click the check box next to "Show weekends for this lesson plan".

    2. Teacher Visibility:

      1. Editable - teachers can view and edit lesson plans

      2. Visible - teachers can view lesson plans

      3. Hidden - teachers cannot view the lesson plan

  3. After you have adjusted these settings, click the blue Save button.

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