Slides have been part of teaching for decades, but they have always faced the same way: towards the class, with the teacher driving. Sprout’s Lesson Slides flip that. Each deck is a ten-slide interactive lesson the student drives — they tap through focused teaching screens, hit a self-checking challenge every few slides, and watch an XP bar fill as they go. We introduced the format for families in the launch post; this one is about what it unlocks in a classroom.
Not a presentation — thirty presentations
A PowerPoint is one deck, presented once, at one pace, to everyone. A Lesson Slides deck is generated per topic and per interest, and every student runs their own copy at their own pace. The structure is fixed and deliberate: a hook, five teaching slides that build one idea at a time, three interactive challenges that step up in difficulty (an easy warm-up on slide 4, a sorting or ordering task on slide 7, a stretch problem on slide 9), and a recap of what the student can now do. Nobody can tune out and coast to the end — the deck won’t carry a passenger past a challenge they haven’t met.
Five places a deck earns its keep
- Starters and warm-ups. A deck is about ten minutes end to end — almost exactly the length of a lesson opening. Yesterday’s concept as today’s warm-up, with the challenges doing your retrieval practice for you.
- Rotations and stations. The perennial problem with the independent station is that it collapses without an adult. A deck teaches, checks and gives feedback on its own, which makes it the rare station activity that is genuinely independent.
- Early finishers. Instead of the time-filling colouring sheet, the student who finishes first gets an extension deck on the same topic, one step harder, wrapped in something they actually like.
- Differentiation without the photocopying. Generate the same concept as three decks — different entry points, different interests — and each group gets a version pitched to them. The strategy from differentiation at scale, finally cheap enough to do on a Tuesday.
- Homework that gets done. A deck is short, plays on a phone, marks itself, and remembers where the student was. That is four of the five reasons homework usually fails removed before the bell rings.
The quiet win is the marking that never arrives. Every challenge in every deck checks itself, celebrates the right answer and hints at the wrong one — so thirty students practising no longer means thirty pages to mark.
Built for real classrooms, not demo videos
Decks are aligned to the Australian Curriculum and written in Australian English, like everything Sprout makes. They run in the browser on whatever the school actually has — laptops, iPads, or the phones in pockets — with progress saved, so a deck started in class can be finished at home. Wrong answers earn hints rather than red crosses, which matters most for exactly the students you would build a deck for: the reluctant, the anxious, and the ones for whom “have another go” beats “wrong” every time.
The two-minute version of using them
Describe the topic and year level, choose the slides format, and add the interest — the class’s current obsession, or a different one per group. Generate, skim the deck yourself the way a student would, then share it. The honest test is the same one we recommend for every tool: if it could go in front of your class tomorrow with only light edits, it earns a place in the kit. New accounts start with free credits, so you can build a deck free for next week’s trickiest topic and run that test yourself.
FAQ
How are Lesson Slides different from a PowerPoint presentation?
A PowerPoint is one deck presented by the teacher at one pace for the whole class. A Lesson Slides deck is an interactive lesson each student runs themselves: ten focused slides with three self-checking challenges (slides 4, 7 and 9, stepping up in difficulty) and an XP bar that tracks progress. Students cannot coast through by tuning out, because the deck does not move past a challenge they have not met.
How can teachers use Lesson Slides in class?
The formats that work best: as a ten-minute starter doing retrieval practice on yesterday’s concept; as the independent station in rotations, because a deck teaches and checks itself without an adult; as extension decks for early finishers; as cheap differentiation, by generating the same concept as different decks for different groups; and as homework that plays on a phone, marks itself and saves progress.
Do Lesson Slides need marking?
No. Every challenge in a deck is self-checking - it confirms correct answers instantly and offers a hint rather than a red cross when the student is wrong, then lets them try again. Thirty students practising does not produce thirty pages of marking.
Are Lesson Slides aligned to the Australian Curriculum?
Yes. Decks are generated against the Australian Curriculum and written in Australian English, like every Sprout lesson, and they run in the browser on laptops, iPads or phones with progress saved.