03a / EXAMPLE LESSON
A step-by-step guide to your first EVA lesson.
Every stage, every panel, and the research-informed pedagogy underneath.
01 · The Shape of the Lesson
One lesson, five phases, sixty minutes
Every EVA lesson moves through the same five-phase arc: Intro · Starter · Bridge · Main · Plenary. This structure is shaped by research on dialogic teaching and classroom oracy.
The Five Stages
Why each of the five stages is here
The five stages aren't an arbitrary order. Each one does specific cognitive and dialogic work — drawing on a body of research about how pupils learn, retain, and transfer knowledge.
What it does
Activates prior knowledge through Quick Recall, frames the lesson with a problem and a why-this-matters, sets the talk rules.
Why it's here
Retrieval practice strengthens long-term memory by reactivating what pupils already know. A clear frame primes attention — it tells working memory what to filter for. Roediger · Bjork · Willingham.
What it does
Surfaces what pupils already think — usually as a prediction they commit to silently before saying anything aloud.
Why it's here
Predictions surface misconceptions before instruction can confirm them. Silent commitment lowers the stakes of being publicly wrong — the precondition for honest exploratory talk. Mercer · Wegerif.
What it does
A short preview of the Main's two stages and what pupils are about to do.
Why it's here
Advance organisers reduce cognitive load by giving pupils a mental scaffold for what's coming. Knowing the shape of the next 20 minutes frees working memory for the substance. Ausubel · Sweller.
What it does
The lesson's centre — pupils encounter evidence, discuss it in pairs, and build the analytical framework the unit will use.
Why it's here
Dialogic enquiry treats talk as the engine of thinking, not its decoration. Paired discussion sits in the zone of proximal development — pupils achieve together what they couldn't yet do alone. Alexander · Vygotsky.
What it does
Pupils consolidate by reflecting on what they built, then commit to a prediction for next lesson.
Why it's here
Reflection is metacognition — pupils notice their own thinking, which is what makes it transferable. Predictions seed retrieval at the start of the next lesson. Flavell · Brown.
02 · The Screen, Labelled
What you and your pupils will see
One stage per page. Buttons reveal panels in sequence, not all at once — so pupils meet new material in deliberate steps that working memory can hold. The pacing draws on cognitive load theory and the research on how the brain builds new knowledge.
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1Stage tabs (top) Five tabs — Introduction · Starter · Bridge · Main · Plenary. Click any tab to jump to that stage. The active stage tab is amber.
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2Learning Objective bar The "I can…" statement for the lesson, with Bloom verbs in bold. Sits at the top of every stage so pupils always see what they're working towards.
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3Visible default panel Some core panels — here the Unit and Today's Enquiry Questions — open as the stage loads. Other panels stay hidden until you click their button below.
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4Action bar — footer of each stage Each ★ button reveals a core panel inline; un-starred buttons are optional add-ons. The active panel's button glows amber. This is what paces the slow release of content through the stage.
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5Guidance button (far right) Opens the teacher-only dialogic playbook for the active stage — Why this matters · Listen for · Look for · If you hear · Room quiet?
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6Settings cog (top-right) A small menu: How this lesson works · Edit Page (type directly into any panel) · Download (save your edited version as HTML).
04 · Inside a Stage
How a stage unfolds
Within any single stage, you reveal panels one at a time by clicking the action-bar buttons at the bottom of the screen. The buttons are sequenced deliberately — work through them left to right, closing each panel as you finish with it.
How a stage unfolds — click by click
Below is the Intro stage of Lesson 1 as it actually unfolds. Press the buttons from left to right; each click adds a panel to the screen, and pressing the same button again hides it. The amber-starred buttons are core (essential); the un-starred ones are optional add-ons.
05 · The Guidance Panel
Your in-class co-pilot — anatomy of the slide-out
Every stage carries a Teacher Guidance panel — the right-most button on the action bar opens it. It is your dialogic playbook for that stage: what to listen for, what to look for, what to say back when a pupil utterance lands. The fields appear in the same fixed order every time, so you can scan it in the seven seconds between a pupil speaking and you replying.
Five fields, always in the same order
The panel doesn't ask you to remember anything new. It gives you a script you can scan during the gap between a pupil saying something and you replying. Read top to bottom; pick the field that fits the moment.
- Why this matters One sentence of the stage's pedagogical purpose. Read this first if you're new to the lesson — it tells you what the stage is for, so the rest of the panel lands in context.
- Listen for The pupil utterance that signals the stage is landing. If you hear it (or something close), the stage is on rails — move forward. If you don't hear it after a couple of minutes, hold the phase.
- Look for What strong dialogue looks like in the room — body language, citation behaviour, who's quoting whom. The non-verbal signal that complements the listen-for utterance.
- If you hear… Three or four likely pupil moves — each paired with a dialogic move (Redirect · Probe · Reframe · Defer · Accept and probe) and a verbatim response you can use as-is.
- Room quiet? One specific recovery move for when pair-talk stalls. Always concrete — never "encourage more discussion". Usually a re-pair instruction plus a sentence stem or a visual cue.
The Black Death and Peasants' Revolt
How far did the Black Death remake medieval England?
The Black Death and Peasants' Revolt
Year 7 KS3 - 6 Lessons - Oracy Resource Pack
Six lessons built around structured dialogue — from a society reading its own mortality figures through to the revolt of 1381 and a verdict on how far catastrophe remade England.