THE STARTING POINT
Connect lessons, practice, feedback and assessment in a learning journey. Use an example to define what students should do after each concept.
Begin with something a learner can do.
Describe the practical activity the learner should be able to complete. Use this to decide which concepts, examples and exercises belong in the learning journey. Keep the audience’s starting knowledge visible so the same material is not assumed to suit every learner.
Make practice part of the journey.
Place opportunities to apply a concept close to the explanation. A practice task can reveal questions that a lesson alone does not answer. Scope the resources, instructions and support needed to complete the activity, including what a learner should do when they get stuck.
Give feedback a clear purpose.
Feedback should help a learner understand the next action: revise an approach, revisit a concept or try a different example. Agree how feedback is created, who can review it and how learners will use it. Avoid treating a completion marker as the only view of progress.
Connect assessment to the goal.
Review whether the assessment actually checks the intended activity. Define the criteria before marking submissions. Consider access, time and the support different learners may need. Document how results are interpreted so educators and learners share the same expectations.
Build a lesson-to-practice sequence
Choose an observable activity before deciding how much material to teach. Identify the concepts a learner needs for that activity and remove explanations that do not support the immediate objective. Show a short worked example, then ask the learner to make a related decision independently.
Make the practice conditions clear: available resources, allowed tools, expected output and where help is available. Review the attempt against criteria shared in advance. Ask the learner to explain a choice, revise a mistake and try a variation. This creates a sequence that a teacher can inspect, rather than assuming that watching a lesson establishes the ability to perform the task.
A practical activity design sheet
Use one sheet per activity. Keep the task small enough for meaningful feedback and connect it to the next learning step.
- Intended action: what the learner should produce, explain, diagnose or demonstrate.
- Starting point: prerequisite knowledge, tools and any preparation the learner needs.
- Practice prompt: the situation, constraints and fictional data or materials provided.
- Evidence: the output and explanation that a reviewer will examine.
- Feedback: who responds, what the criteria are and when another attempt is possible.
- Transfer: a different situation in which the learner can apply the same idea.
Do not make practice a disconnected extra
An activity can be entertaining while testing a different skill from the lesson. Check whether completing it requires the intended concept or merely following a sequence of clicks. Remove avoidable obstacles such as missing files and unexplained software setup.
Avoid feedback that reveals the full answer before the learner has attempted the reasoning. Provide enough guidance to support a next attempt, and allow the reviewer to distinguish a misunderstanding from a technical access problem.
How difficult should the first practice be?
Choose a task that uses the new concept without adding many unrelated demands. Increase complexity after learners can explain the basic decision. A useful progression changes one condition at a time, so teachers can see what caused a difficulty and provide relevant support.
ILLUSTRATIVE PLANNING EXAMPLE
Example: teaching a database query
After explaining filters and joins, ask learners to answer a specific question using a small practice dataset. Provide the question, table definitions and expected output format. Include a hint for a common mistake, then let learners revise their query after feedback. Use fictional records instead of personal student or customer data.
The learning evidence is the query, its result and the learner’s explanation. A completion tick alone does not show whether the learner can apply the concept.
TAKE THE NEXT STEP
Your discovery checklist
- What should a learner be able to do?
- Where will they practice it?
- What feedback helps them improve?
- How will the intended activity be assessed?
FURTHER READING
Official resources to explore
Explore the related official guidance below. The templates and examples are practical starting points to adapt to your own project.