Creating Lesson Pages

first create a new page: Dashboard > All Pages – then click the “Add New” button.

For ALL lesson pages

Page information (right-hand column)

• Template: “Lesson”
• Category: “Lesson”
• Excerpt: NB: the excerpt text appears on the Lesson Group Menu page. You can use the first sentence or two from lesson’s summary or description — this might need editing;
• Parent Page: the Lesson Group that the lesson is from

Page content

• Lesson title
• Lesson summary or description goes in page content block

Metadata: AC lesson

• Grade level: take from original lesson, you might need to use more than one value
• Lesson date: use the year only; take from date that workshop was held; some of the PDF lessons include the date on the PDF
• Source: workshop or project name, ex: “Living on the Edge of Empire”
• Author: select an existing author from the dropdown list, if you don’t see the name, you’ll need to new author; to add new authors, save the lesson, then navigate to Dashboard, from the Dashboard left-side menu select Pages > Authors; for “Name” field use person’s full name (ex: “Lynne Manring”), for “Slug” field use lowercase, last name first (ex: “manring-lynne”), leave “Description” field blank, then click “Add new Author” button and return to editing your lesson page. The new author will now be available in the Author field dropdown menu.

Materials and Resources wysiwyg field

PDF lessons, such as those from the Landmarks workshops, contain both the Materials lists and the Teaching steps in the PDF itself, so these two wysiwyg fields are left blank.

Non-PDF lessons, copy and paste the list of materials from the original lesson into this field. Ensure that:

• the list of materials is formatted as bulleted (unordered) lists.
• all links are working and up to date; links to external, non-Centuries webpages should be set to open in a new tab.
• Use H5 subheads to identify groups of materials such as “Collection Items” or “Websites”.
• To create linked materials such as new PDFs or new web pages, please see documentation “Making Linked Lesson Materials”.

Teaching the Lesson wysiwyg field

Copy and paste the teaching steps from the original lesson into this field. Be careful to reproduce the typographic styles from the sample lessons; when using headings be sure the text is not also bolded. Please edit lists of teaching steps so that they’re true “ordered lists” and not paragraphs with numbers.

Metadata: AC all

• Topic: read the lesson and assign appropriate topic(s) values
• Era: read the lesson and assign appropriate era(s) values
• Event: ditto; NB: many lessons will not have an appropriate event and this field can be left blank
• Place: ditto; NB: many lessons will not have an appropriate place and this field can be left blank

Related

• Select items related to this lesson; choose from a variety of content types.

For PDF lessons

Follow instructions above EXCEPT no need to put any content into the Materials & Resources or Teaching the Lesson fields as this info is contained in the PDF itself.

After copying in the page content, add a new block using the black icon with the plus sign in it. The new block should be a “file” block which will give you the option to upload the PDF file.

For curricula lessons

The lessons that comprise the curricula are more complex than other lessons. These lessons include content and details not found in the other lesson groups. Below are instructions for translating curricula lessons into the standard Lesson template.

Page Attributes (right-hand column)

Same as other lessons except:

• Page order: number lessons in the same numerical sequence as on old site Unit Overview page
• Excerpt: use the text in the “Content Covered” column from Unit Overview page

Page Content Area

Title: same title as original lesson

Page Content: 

• Unit Central Questions, use H5 for header, this text is the same on all lessons in the Lesson Group (unit)
• Key Content Ideas: use H5 for header, copy paste text from old lesson making sure bulleted lists are formatted correctly
• Teacher Background Essay, create link to correct essay in new site; all essays should be available as pages in the new site.
• Intended Learning Outcomes: use H4 heading
  • Understandings and Skills: use H5 heading, format lists correctly
• Note: you can ignore “Lesson Length” info from old lesson as well as “Materials in Context”

Metadata Fields

• Topic: read the lesson to select appropriate topic(s)
• Eras: ditto
• Place: ditto
• Event: ditto
• Related Items: ditto
• Authors: use authors listed on the Unit Overview page
• Source: use the lesson group (unit) from which the lesson comes
• Grade Level: use grades from Unit Overview page 
• Date: use “2000” for all curricula lessons

Materials & Resources 

note: before creating links to related materials, it’s best to make those pages first so you have a URL to copy for the link. See Lessons: Related Materials for more info.

• Copy and paste content found in the “Materials” section from old lesson into the dedicated “Materials & Resources” wysiwyg field;
• Use H5 for headings such as “Primary and Secondary Sources”;
• Make sure lists are correctly formatted as lists;
• Don’t bother linking to related resources until those pages have been created

Teaching the Lesson

• Copy and paste the content from the following sections in the old lesson: “In Preparation for Teaching”, “Activities” and “Assessment” into the dedicated “Teaching the Lesson” wysiwyg field;
• Use H5 for headings such as “In Preparation for Teaching”;
• Use bold text for activity titles
• Make sure lists are correctly formatted as lists;

Next: Continue to Lessons: Related Materials