The updated Lesson Dashboard lets teachers manage class attendance, behaviour, assignments, and student information efficiently. It provides features for taking attendance, logging behavioural incidents, assigning work, and accessing student profiles. Teachers can also utilise bulk actions for managing multiple students, upload lesson plans, and analyse demographic data.
It also allows for My Classroom to be used for arranging seating plans and layouts.
The new Lesson Dashboard can be accessed by:
- clicking on the lesson in your or another staff member's calendar
- going to Students > Attendance > Registers > Daily Attendance and selecting the class
You will need to have been given access to the Course in order to take the class register, either through being an academic lead or through one of these methods: Giving permission for other staff or teaching assistants to take attendance registers
Navigating the Lesson Dashboard
There are 5 consecutive tabs on the main page: Dashboard, Register, Behaviour, Assignments
and Admin. Click on these to toggle between the functionality within the same page.
Use the options in the left-hand menu to access additional pages like Demographics and Medical Conditions, as well as the previous version of the Lesson Dashboard (Legacy Dashboard)
The Dashboard tab
The overview presents a table which includes the following:
- All Students enrolled in the class
- Their pinned notes (pastoral information)
- Whether they are SEN support
- Their Incidents (Negative & Positive)
- The Attendance Mark for the lesson
- Any Attendance Notes (including Planned absences)
It also provides a quick way to Log Behaviour or Download a student list using the buttons in the top right of the page.
Tip: To view a planned absence, click an absent Attendance Mark and check the slide-over.
For a full guide on how you can use this area, please refer to the article: Preparing for a lesson using the Dashboard tab
Managing behaviour, adding interventions and communicating with students using the bulk actions on the Dashboard tab
Tick the students you want to complete the action for, then click the Bulk action button to choose which action to take. You can assign behaviour, add students to an intervention or send communications for specific students rather than a whole class.
Please note: The options to manage behaviour (like Points Awards, Detentions and Incidents) are only available for lessons that have already started/taken place and lessons that start within the next hour. If you need to record behaviour for future lessons, see how to do this here: Where can I log an incident from?
Student contextual details and pinned notes
On your lesson dashboard, above your list of students, you will be able to see a drop-down menu titled Add Columns.
- Admins can see how to add a UDF to Lesson Dashboards here: Showing a UDF in lessons
The Pinned notes column will display pastoral notes, behaviour notes, SEN notes (ALN notes for Welsh schools) and safeguarding notes that have been pinned to the top of the student profile. We do not display Child protection notes or any other kind of pinnable note.
- Click whatever column you would like to add, then click Apply, and that context will appear next to student names for this lesson from now on.
- If you do not have the ability to add or hide these columns yourself, your school has chosen to centrally set which columns show as a default. Please ask your school admin staff to change them using these instructions.
- If the column you cannot see is a custom User Defined Field set up by your school, Admins can see how to make these available here: Setting up and managing User Defined Fields (UDFs)
Clicking on any name in your Students list will bring up a panel of key details. Clicking on their name here will take you to their Student Profile where all info about them is collected. You’ll see all the details you have permission to view about them.
Register tab (Taking Attendance)
This tab provides a register page for you to take attendance. The attendance marks entered filter back through to the Dashboard tab.
- Use the options next to students to mark Absent, Late or Present
- Use the Mark All Blank as dropdown to bulk assign. marks
- Use the Switch to list view/Switch to profile view buttons to change the format of the page
You'll also see alerts for students who are scheduled to be out of the lesson, such as if they're planned in for a different session.
Behaviour tab
This tab is an overview of the behaviour in the lesson; it lets you award or deduct behaviour points and view/log behaviour incidents associated with the lesson.
You can only log behaviour in this area for the lesson itself. It is not possible to record behaviour in lesson dashboards for other lessons.
If you need to record behaviour for future lessons, see how to do this here: Where can I log an incident from?
- To add/deduct a behaviour point, select one of the options, then select a points category and the student(s).
- The same process applies for adding an Incident. Select the option, choose the behaviour type and select the student(s).
You can also use the green Log Behaviour option in the top-right corner to use the same actions.
The system automatically adds details like the time of the award or incident for you. Need to adjust/check the details or add further information? Use the Add Details button before clicking Log behaviour
Top Tip: If you want to award multiple students points in one go or want to log an incident for multiple students, you can select them in one go with the Students dropdown when assigning the points.
For a full guide on using this tab to record behaviour, please refer to the Logging Behaviour from the Lesson Dashboard guide.
Assignments tab
This tab shows the current assignments given to the class, lets you to add more or click on Assignment Submissions to grade work.
To record a new assignment:
- Click on +Add within the Assignments section, and enter appropriate notes on the work to be carried out, as well as choosing how submitted work will be graded.
Take a look at this article for more details on assignments.
Admin tab
In this tab you can see the Lesson's name, the Staff member(s) assigned to the lesson and you can access the course for the lesson. School Admins can also make changes to these details from here.
- To access the course, you would select the course column, then select the More information option. This will then take you to the course itself.
Students and staff linked to the lesson
- To add students into this particular lesson, follow our guidance here: Can I add or remove students from a single lesson?
- To add staff members to this particular lesson, click on +Add within the Staff section. You can see more details on this here: Can I add or remove staff from a single lesson?
My Classroom
If your school uses My Classroom and a room has been assigned to your lesson, you will see a sixth tab for My Classroom. This is where you can create and assign seating plans and layouts. It also provides another area where you can log behaviour.
For more information on how you can use the My Classroom function, please refer to the My Classroom guide.
Demographics & Medical Conditions
Click on the menu on the left of the lesson dashboard for further insight into your students.
In Demographics, you can filter your statistics based on sex, and see a breakdown of what demographics make up your lesson.
Clicking on the group will display a list of the students in this demographic.
In Medical Conditions to find out the medical and allergy information of the students in your class. Click on the student to get more information, or to edit the information.
Meal Choices
If your school uses meals, you can access the meals register by clicking Meal Choices from the left-hand menu.
Take a look at this article for full instructions: How can teachers take the meal register?
Using the previous (Legacy) Lesson Dashboard
The previous version of the Lesson Dashboard is still available for now, so you can keep working the way you’re used to while you get comfortable with the new layout. We recommend the new Lesson Dashboard, as new and changed features are only added there. You can use the new version for some lessons and the previous version for others.
The previous Lesson Dashboard will be removed in future. We’ll update this guide when we have a date.
To open it, select Legacy Dashboard from the left-hand menu of a lesson.
How the previous Dashboard is laid out
The previous Dashboard is one page that you scroll down. This is where things have moved in the new Lesson Dashboard:
| Previous Dashboard | New Lesson Dashboard |
|---|---|
| Take Register button, or Attendance in the left-hand menu | Register tab |
| Assignments section on the page | Assignments tab |
| Lesson admin actions on the right-hand side (change staff, attachments, suspend, delete) | Admin tab |
| Log behaviour from the page or bulk actions | Log behaviour button (shortcut b) and Behaviour tab |
| Hovering over the pinned notes flag | Clicking the Pinned notes column |
| Contextual Information drop-down | Add columns on the Dashboard tab |
Only in the new Lesson Dashboard
- A warning if another user changes a student’s attendance mark while you’re taking the register, with options to cancel, overwrite or refresh.
- The Log behaviour button on every tab, and the Behaviour tab.
- Click-through panels for pinned notes, medical details, attendance and behaviour.
- The SEN Support column and custom (user-defined) fields as columns.
What stays the same
- The columns you can show are still set under School > Programs > Lesson settings.
- The one-hour rule for logging behaviour applies in both versions.
- Some actions, such as downloading, changing the lesson location and certain bulk actions, still open in the previous page layout from the new dashboard. This is expected.
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