Quizl Stories: Teach the Lesson Before You Quiz It

Quizl runs live quizzes: a join code on the projector, a countdown, a leaderboard. What it could not do was the part that comes first, when students still need to learn the material.

Stories do that. A Story is a slideshow you build in Quizl and share with a link. No join code, no timer, no scoreboard. Students open it and read at their own pace.

Why Not Just Use Slides

Quizzing students on material they have not seen yet does not tell you much. The first few questions are guesswork, and the leaderboard ends up sorted by who guessed well.

You can teach from slides in one tool and quiz in another. Plenty of teachers do. But then the lesson and the quiz live in different places and drift apart over the term. Stories keep both in Quizl, built from the same lesson, with the same image search and the same link sharing.

Four Slide Layouts

Each slide uses one of four layouts:

• Image + text: a picture with a heading and a paragraph under it
• Image only: when the picture is the point
• Text only: a definition, a question, or a section break
• Text over image: words on top of a full-bleed background

Most students will read this on a phone. Short headings and a few lines per slide work better than one dense slide they have to zoom into.

Images

Slides use the same Openverse search that Quizl questions already use, so you can find openly licensed images without leaving the editor. You can also upload your own, up to 5MB.

Preview Before Publishing

A Story stays a draft until you publish it. The Preview button opens it the way a student will see it, with a bar at the top reminding you it is not visible to anyone yet. Read it through, fix the slide where you wrote too much, then publish.

Published Stories are shared with a link. Students do not need an account.

How to Use It

Share the Story link at the start of class or the night before. Students read it. Then run a live Quizl on the same content.

The quiz measures something at that point. Students who read carefully do well, and you can see what landed and what needs another pass tomorrow.

Stories are also useful after the fact, as review material or something to send to students who were absent.

What It Costs

Every account can build a Story. Free accounts get one. Pro is $15 a year and makes it unlimited.

Pro also covers unlimited saved puzzles, AI-generated crossword clues, folders, CSV upload for long word lists, access codes for tracking who played, and no watermark on prints.

If you already subscribe, Stories are in your account now. Open Quizl and look for Create a Story.

Getting Started

Go to Quizl, click New Story, and give it a title. Add slides, pick a layout for each, search or upload an image, then preview it on your phone before publishing.

Build the first one from a lesson you are teaching this week. Six or eight slides is plenty.