Customizing Lessons
When you connect a child's name to a lesson's name on the Activity page, their progress with that lesson or material is automatically updated everywhere else in Transparent Classroom. However, you may have noticed that the pre-loaded lessons in Transparent Classroom don't match the lessons from your training. Don't fret, you can customize them!
This article will walk you through:
- Adding a New Lesson, Group, or Material
- Moving Lessons (Rearranging Your Scope and Sequence)
- Archiving vs. Deleting a Lesson
You can read on for instructions or watch this brief tutorial video:
Adding a New Lesson, Group, or Material
When entering a lesson on the Activity page using the "#", you may notice that sometimes no lesson shows up. Or when you save the observation, the #lessonname doesn't turn into a blue hyperlink. This could mean two things, either the lesson doesn't exist in your lesson set, or it's archived (more about that in a moment). Before adding the lesson, you want to check that it does not exist, so type it in the search bar.
If the lesson shows up, click on it to go to the lesson page and then click [Edit]. This will take you to the lesson editor. Here, you can click on the lesson name, and then click [+Unarchive]; this will add the lesson back to your lesson set. Once you've unarchived the lesson, you can tag it on the Activity page.
If the lesson does not show up when you search, the lesson does not exist in your lesson set and you'll want to add it. Click on [Lessons] on the sidebar to go to the lesson editor.
Once on the Lessons Page, you can view your entire lesson set. You can see areas such as Practical Life, Sensorial, and Language which are then organized into Groups of lessons such as Touch and Visual. Within each Group of lessons, you can find Materials and Lessons. Each Material will have lessons associated with it, for example, the Pink Tower Material has an “Introduction” lesson as well as a “Unit of Measure” lesson.
To add a new lesson, decide where you want it to live, then click on [Add Lesson]. Type the lesson name and save. This new lesson is now ready to be used for record keeping throughout Transparent Classroom. You can also click on the lesson name to open the edit screen for that lesson and add a photo and a description. The photo and description help parents understand the purpose of lessons without going into too much detail.
If you'd like to add a new Material, first create a group. Once you've saved it, click on the group name to open the edit screen. Look to the bottom left to find a dropdown that allows you to switch from Group to Material. You can also add a description to the group or material here.
Moving Lessons
If you want to reorder the lesson progression, click the handle (the three little lines) to the right of the lesson name and drag the lesson into place.
To move the lesson outside the Group or Material, click on the lesson name, then click [Move] and select a new destination for the lesson from the list given.
Archiving vs. Deleting a Lesson
If you’re looking through the lessons we’ve provided and you notice that there are lessons in this list that you don’t have, or you currently have rotated off your shelf, you can hide a lesson by clicking on the lesson name and clicking [Archive] and [Save]. This lesson will be hidden from view, but you can always access it by going back to [Lessons] and clicking [Show Archived] at the top right. If you want to use this lesson for record keeping, click on the lesson name and then choose [Unarchive].
To completely delete a lesson, click [Archive] then click [Delete]. If a child has been tagged with this lesson, the lesson will not delete. So you don't have to worry about accidentally deleting information from a child's record. If you still want to delete this lesson, click on [Lesson Page] to go to the lesson page and delete any observations associated with it. Once you've done that, you can delete the lesson by clicking [Edit] to go back to the [Lessons] page.
Important Note
Some important things to note when customizing your lessons. First, lesson names must be able to stand alone as they are the only thing you will see when recording observations and presentations on the Activity page. The exception to this rule is Materials. When a lesson is within a material, you will see both the material’s name AND the lesson’s name.
It is important to remember that your lessons are shared with all other classrooms at your level unless your school has made another arrangement. This means, for example, that any changes you make to the Primary lessons will affect all of the Primary classrooms, in addition to your own.
Questions?
If you have additional questions or feedback, please send us an email at info@transparentclassroom.com, or click [?] > [Ask] in the bottom right-hand corner of your browser window.