Lesson Plan Template

What is a Lesson Plan?

A lesson plan is the teacher's written route through a single lesson: what students should be able to do by the end, the standard it serves, the materials, a timed sequence of activities and how you will check that they learned it. It lets a substitute teach your class, shows an observer your intent, and lets you repeat what worked next year. Without one, lessons drift, and checking for understanding is the first thing to go.

Classroom teachers write them daily or weekly, in more or less detail depending on experience and what the school expects. Student teachers and new teachers write full plans for observations, coursework and licensure portfolios. Substitute plans, tutoring sessions, homeschool lessons, workplace training and library or museum workshops use the same structure. A plan is most useful when it records decisions — why this activity, in this order, for these students — rather than just a list of things to get through.

What goes on the standards line depends on where you teach. In the US, each state sets its own standards, many based on or adapted from the Common Core, and districts often add a required template or pacing guide. In England, the national curriculum sets content for maintained schools, and each school chooses its planning format. In India, lessons follow NCERT textbooks and the National Curriculum Framework, or the state board's syllabus. Canada's curricula are set by each province and territory, and Australia uses the Australian Curriculum or a state version. Where your school or training course sets a format, follow it.

A lesson plan is not a script, and it is not a unit plan. It covers one lesson, so the larger arc — how this lesson builds on the last and leads to the end-of-unit assessment — needs its own document. It also does not guarantee learning: the plan records what you intend, and only the check for understanding shows what happened. Treat it as a working document, and change course in the room when the evidence tells you to.

What to put in a Lesson Plan

These are the details this template asks for. Anything left blank is marked in red on the preview so you can see what is still missing.

How to write a Lesson Plan

1. Write objectives students can demonstrate

   Start from what students will be able to do by the end, using a verb you can observe: identify, explain, compare, solve, create. ‘Students will be able to compare fractions with different denominators and explain which is larger’ can be checked. ‘Students will understand fractions’ cannot. Bloom's taxonomy gives you a ladder of verbs from recall up to creating; pick the level this lesson reaches.

2. Tie it to a standard, list materials

   Copy the standard or curriculum reference exactly as your district or school writes it — the code and a short description — so anyone reviewing the plan can see where it fits. Then list everything you need: texts with page numbers, handouts, manipulatives, devices, links tested in advance, and anything that has to be printed or booked. A missing class set of scissors can cost you the whole practice stage.

3. Sequence the lesson and time each stage

   Break the lesson into stages — warm-up, modeling, guided practice, independent practice and a close — and put a time against each so they add up to the length of the lesson. For each stage, write what you will do and what students will do. Note the key questions you plan to ask, and decide in advance what you will cut if you run over, so the close is not the part that disappears.

4. Decide how you will check learning

   Before students leave, you need evidence of whether they met the objective. An exit ticket — a short question or two answered on a slip at the end — is quick to read and tells you who needs help tomorrow. Mini whiteboards, targeted questions during guided practice, or a short task scored against the objective also work. Whatever you choose must test the objective itself, not just effort or participation.

5. Add support, stretch, homework and notes

   Note how you will support students who need it — sentence starters, a worked example, a partner, fewer items — and how you will stretch those who finish early with a harder problem rather than more of the same. Build in accommodations from students' IEPs or other support plans. Set homework only if it practices the objective. After the lesson, jot a few lines on what worked and what to change.

Common mistakes

• Writing objectives as activities — ‘students will complete the worksheet’ — leaves you with no way to tell whether anyone learned anything.
• Planning more activities than the time allows means the close and the check for understanding get cut, so you finish without knowing who understood.
• Listing a standard the activities never address produces a plan that looks aligned on paper and falls apart at an observer's first question.
• Leaving out support and stretch means the same task is too hard for some students and too easy for others, and both groups stop working.
• Skipping the notes after the lesson means next year's version repeats the same problems, because nobody wrote down what went wrong.

Frequently asked questions

This page explains general practice and is not legal advice. Requirements differ between countries and, in some cases, between states — check what applies where the document will be used.

Related templates

All templates · Administration templates