Substitute Teacher Guide • Grade 11 • Unit C: Typography Mastery
Typography in Photoshop — Day 1 of 2
Today's focus: Exploring the Panels
⚠️ Heads-Up: This is exam-relevant
This lesson maps directly to an Adobe Certified Professional (ACP) exam domain. Keep a running personal vocabulary list all year -- it becomes your exam study guide. See the ACP Exam Prep section for a full study guide and practice questions.
✅ Before Students Arrive
- Materials needed today:
- Computer with Photoshop
- Most students keep their class notebook at its usual spot in the room and use it every day (see routine below) -- but it's each student's own notebook, so a few may bring theirs from home instead. Either way, everyone should have one out.
- Write today's Do Now on the board before the bell rings (see below).
📓 Daily Notebook Routine (students already know this)
Keep this going every day, in your class notebook: date today's entry, jot your Do Now response, add any new vocabulary word(s) from today's Key Vocabulary section (word + a quick picture + a simple definition in your own words), and take 60 seconds to sketch something connected to today's topic. This notebook is yours to study from, reference on projects, and pull evidence from later for your portfolio.
📁 Portfolio Update Reminder
Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), add your best finished or in-progress work to a running portfolio folder with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what skill or standard it shows. This becomes your formal Google Sites portfolio in Unit F -- keep it current all year so you're not scrambling right before your PBAT and portfolio review.
🗣️ Opening: Do Now
Write or project this, and have students start immediately:
“.”
📋 Class Plan (step by step)
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Step 1 — 10 min
🗣️ Say: "Today we're looking at ___." Then walk through the point(s) below at the front of the room.
📋 Mini-lesson/demo (10 min): tour of the Character and Paragraph panels.
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Step 2 — 25 min
🗣️ Say: "Let's do the first one together, then you'll try the rest on your own."
📋 Guided practice (25 min): systematically test every major setting on the same sample word/paragraph, screenshotting each change.
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Step 3 — 5 min
🗣️ Say: "Let's hear from a few people before we move on."
📋 Share (5 min).
🔑 Vocabulary Introduced Today
- Character Panel
- Photoshop's panel for controlling font, size, tracking, leading, and other letter-level type settings.
- Paragraph Panel
- Photoshop's panel for controlling alignment and spacing at the paragraph level.
✅ Wrap-Up: Exit Ticket
A few minutes before the bell, say: "Time to finish your exit ticket."
“Name one Character or Paragraph panel setting you used and explain the effect it had on your poster.”
Collect exit tickets (or have students leave them in the usual spot) for the regular teacher to review.
⏳ If You're Short on Time
Protect the Do Now and the Exit Ticket above all else -- those are how the regular teacher tracks daily progress. If a step above is optional/homework, or is a "share out"/discussion step, shorten or skip it first.
⏳ If Students Finish Early
Have them keep working in their notebook: add extra detail to today's vocabulary sketch, review previous vocabulary, or -- if this is a portfolio update week for this class -- work on their portfolio. Early finishers should never be idle or distracting to classmates still working.
📝 For the Regular Teacher (fill in ahead of time)
- Regular teacher's name / how to reach them: ______________________________
- Where finished work / exit tickets go: ______________________________
- Front office extension / emergency contact: ______________________________
- Anything else this class needs to know today: ______________________________