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TEACHER-How to create a virtual lesson in 5 steps
TEACHER-How to create a virtual lesson in 5 steps

This article describes the 5 steps to consider when creating a virtual lesson

Sue Soltis avatar
Written by Sue Soltis
Updated over a week ago

High-quality eAcademy™ courses are well organized, uncluttered, and easy to navigate. The aesthetic appeal of a course can truly have an impact on student learning. Strive to work toward creating concept "chunks" that are presented with a formative type of assessment to gauge learning. The formative assessment can be a non-graded type of assessment.

As a district teacher, you have created many lesson plans for your in-person courses. To help you build your online eAcademy course, Tracy Rains, Appalachia Intermediate Unit 8, shared a handy lesson planning tool she developed. Consider using this virtual lesson planning tool as you create your virtual lessons.

Step 1: Objectives

Think about the following questions as you create your lesson objectives.

  • What is the grade level of the students?

  • What is my content area?

  • What is the length of the lesson?

  • What are my specific lesson objectives?

  • What is my desired outcome for the students? Explore, apply, assess?

Step 2: Cycle of Learning

What specific steps will students follow in the lesson?

  • Explore-Explain-Apply

    • Explore: Students gather background knowledge on a topic. This can be through articles, videos, images, and more.

    • Explain: As the teacher, you supply information the students may be missing after they conducted their research. This can be through articles, videos, images, and more.

    • Apply: Students apply what they learned through the process. Instead of just taking a quiz, students can create something to demonstrate their learning.

  • Workshop Model: The Workshop Model is a teaching framework that encourages students to take charge of their own learning.

    • During the Mini-Lesson, you briefly model a skill, strategy, or step of a project.

    • The Workshop portion requires students to work on their own or in small groups to problem solve, experiment, and conduct research.

    • During the final Debrief, students come together for reflection and may share work samples, successes, and challenges.

  • 5 E's Model:

    • Engage: Start with an activity or question to engage students and grab their interest.

    • Explore: Students participate in activities as they interact with the material to deepen their understanding.

    • Explain: With your help, students explain what they have learned and experienced when interacting with the content. You fill in any missing details or information.

    • Elaborate: Students elaborate on what they learned by applying their knowledge to new situations.

    • Evaluate: Students reflect on their new understanding of the content and provide evidence of this learning.

Step 3: Packaging

What resources or materials can I use to package this lesson?

  • Moodle activities and resources, videos, audio files, articles, websites, Google Apps, MS Office, Open Educational Resources (OER), Padlet, Canva, Nearpod

Step 4: Workflow

What will my workflow look like?

  • Push out content to students?

  • Collect student work?

  • Provide feedback to students?

Step 5: Design

Ask yourself, "How can I make this content engaging and accessible to students?" Think about these elements.

  • Page color

  • Fonts

  • Table properties, using headers, not merging table cells

  • Images

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