Copilot
Embrace AI: it cannot replace you, but it does allow you to work faster and more effectively, helping you to do so many things.
Start by creating a bot for your MS team that can answer student queries on assignments and other topics, create questions on videos or be used to write up assignment briefs in greater detail.
Be sure to check it over – the technology isn't perfect yet.
PowerPoint
Avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’, a heinous crime. Slides should be short and to the point, with space to talk around your topics. This is especially important at A Level, where students should be developing skills in keeping detailed notes.
Go easy on the animations! One type of appearing answer (Fade, Blur etc.) is quite enough per presentation; only use this when asking a leading question.
Mix up your design styles and formatting. With so many to choose from, and more and more AI creeping in, there is no excuse for black text on a white background with no pictures. There is plenty of evidence that shows SEN pupils will benefit from this. A change in the visual aesthetic can also engage a distracted student.
Get students to use PP individually and collaboratively. Most importantly, teach them how; it won't take up much lesson time to show students how to use the ‘Design’ tab.
Teams
Set all homework and coursework through the Assignments section. This keeps track of all hand-ins, can scan for plagiarism, and allows you to export marking and tracking data directly to Excel.
Take the time to set up marking rubrics for your assignments (you only have to do this once and can load onto any assignment suitable). This allows you to mark students work quickly, and allows them to see where they fall in any given mark scheme. Work smart, not hard.
Set up all your tags properly. This allows you to quickly contact groups of students from the class in any of the channels.
Use the class notebook feature and save time (and the planet). This directly links your team to a OneNote notebook where you can put all your resources for inside and outside the classroom. It's 2025 – why use paper to distribute materials?
Use the reflections feature to gauge how students are feeling about their work. Student wellbeing is at the top of the agenda for most schools. This step allows you to quickly check in with students, who can flag any overwhelming feelings.
OneNote
Copy and paste any online video resources into your class notebooks. The clips automatically thumbnail. Students watch these from the notebook page and can add notes in the space provided.
Do this also with PowerPoints. This way a student can keep up with your slides in their notebook page and can even annotate directly onto them.
Use the collaboration space for groupwork, collections of PowerPoints on any given subject, and glossaries.
Use the desktop version of Office apps whenever possible. These always have more powerful tools at your disposal, and this is especially true of OneNote.
Forms
Use Forms to establish availability for rehearsals, and get feedback on your departmental facilities, teaching and a whole host of other things. Students need to buy in to what you are doing, and this is an easy way of giving them ownership.
Use Forms to set quizzes for homework; there is a range of answer styles, from multiple choice to full text responses. All data can be exported directly to Excel to help with tracking.
