Amplify the Impact of Teaching with iPad

iPad is packed with features that help you focus on what's most important; teaching. In this ANZ Back to School session, we explore effective strategies to accelerate student learning through high-impact, evidence-based teaching approaches with iPad. This article showcases practical ideas for structuring lessons, delivering explicit instruction, monitoring progress in real-time, and providing meaningful feedback that moves learning forward.

Every teacher faces the same fundamental challenge - how to deliver high quality instruction to an entire class while still meeting each student's individual needs. iPad and evidence based teaching approaches help solve this by allowing you to structure lessons clearly, make your instruction reusable and accessible, monitor student progress in real time, and provide targeted feedback, amplifying your impact without requiring you to be in two places at once.

Here are two examples of how iPad can do this.

Structure Lessons with Freeform

Using Freeform as a lesson hub allows you to organize links, resources, scenes, and screen recordings in one flexible, visual space. This supports clear lesson structure, easy navigation for students, and seamless transitions between learning activities—helping you maintain momentum and focus during instruction.

Freeform board with a unit of work for students including resources, book links and templates to use.

Follow these steps to create a lesson structure in Freeform:

1. Open Freeform and create a new board
2. Add sections or scenes for different parts of your lesson
3. Insert links to resources, websites, or student materials
4. Record brief screen recordings to explain key concepts or instructions
5. Organize content visually so students can see the flow of the lesson

Explicit Teaching with Screen Recording

Screen recording with Pages templates allows you to create clear, narrated instructions that students can revisit at their own pace. This supports explicit teaching by making your thinking visible, reducing cognitive load during instruction, and providing a reference point for students who need to review steps or concepts.

iPad showing a Pages template and the Screen Recording feature ready to record with Microphone on.

Explore screen recording for explicit instruction as you:

1. Open Pages and select or create a template for your lesson
2. Set up the activity, example, or worked problem you want to demonstrate
3. Start a screen recording from Control Centre and narrate your instructions step-by-step
4. Model your thinking process as you complete the task
5. Share the completed video with students for reference during independent work from your Camera Roll.

Here are some links from Apple's Learning Community for you to explore and go deeper into the opportunities that iPad offer:

• Capture student voice through iPad and Voice Memo
• Create personalised reflective journals in Pages
• Develop teaching templates that enhance student creativity with this Olympic Journal resource shared by Coby Reynolds
• Scaffold student thinking with these Keynote resources shared by Amanda DeGroot in her post, '6 Quick Ideas and Activities for ANY Classroom.'

 Bring an APLS to Your School

Connect with an Apple Professional Learning Provider or Specialist to get personalised support for your educators and students.

Australia - https://www.apple.com/au/education/k12/how-to-buy/professional-learning-specialist-and-providers/

New Zealand - https://www.apple.com/nz/education/k12/how-to-buy/professional-learning-specialist-and-providers/