Lesson Planning Guide | Steps, Examples & Template

Lesson planning helps you stay organized, focused, and prepared to support your students. But knowing what to include in a lesson plan and how to leverage your teaching ideas can take some practice.

An effective lesson plan gives you a clear roadmap for teaching your students while aligning the activities with what students need to learn. The most common lesson plan format includes an objective, learning standards, materials, instructional procedures, and an assessment.

This guide covers what to include in a lesson plan and walks you through the process, step-by-step. You’ll also find a free lesson plan template that you can download and adapt for your classroom.

Need help getting started? Quillbot’s AI Chat can help you brainstorm ideas, activities, and assessments based on your learning objectives.

Lesson plan format

A lesson plan organizes all of the details about a lesson into separate sections with clear headings so that you have a clear visual reference while the lesson is in progress. The most common format includes the date, grade level, and academic subject along with headings for each part of the lesson to help you align instruction to students’ needs.

Lesson plan template (free PDF download)

Before diving into the step-by-step planning process, download this free lesson plan template to use as a guide. It includes dedicated sections for your objectives, standards, materials, procedures, and assessment so you can organize your ideas all in one place.

How to write a lesson plan step-by-step

With your template ready, you can start building your lesson. One of the most effective ways to plan a lesson is through a process called backward planning (or backward design). Instead of starting with classroom activities, backward design focuses on your end goals first: You plan the instruction only after establishing what your students need to achieve.

To use the backward design process, follow four main steps:

1. Choose the standard and objective.
2. Assess student readiness.
3. Design the assessment.
4. Plan the instructional procedure and materials.

The sections below explain the backward design process in more detail.

Step 1: Choose the standard and objective

Start by reviewing the learning standards that the unit is targeting, choose one of those standards, and then select a specific skill or concept to cover in the lesson, which will be the lesson objective. The learning standards may come from your school district, your state’s education department, or a professional organization.

Step 2: Assess student readiness

Next, review (or collect) data about your students’ current level of understanding to diagnose what they still need to learn in order to meet the goal. This data can come from standardized tests, homework assignments, writing samples, or observations.

For example, at the beginning of the unit, you might give a pretest or in-class writing prompt to diagnose students’ skill levels and identify the gaps to fill.

The process of gathering information about students’ readiness (or the activity you use for this purpose) is called formative assessment. The process of planning a lesson that aligns with students’ past performance is called data-driven instruction.

Step 3: Design the assessment

Create or choose an assignment that students will complete at the end of the lesson to demonstrate what they learned. This assessment should directly measure the lesson objective rather than simply asking students to recall the information covered during instruction. As you’re making the assignment, ask yourself:

• What criteria will I use to grade and evaluate students’ work?
• What steps and strategies will lead to high-quality work?

The answers to these questions will help you choose the most relevant information and activities for the lesson.

Step 4: Plan the instructional procedure and materials

With a clear idea of what students already know and how you’ll assess learning, you’re ready to decide how to teach the content or skill and what materials are best for your students. The goal is to fill the gap between what students know now and what they should know when the lesson is over. The instructional procedure often includes three parts:

• Introduction/warm-up to prepare students for the information, such as a quick writing prompt, discussion, game, or video clip
• Direct instruction, where you demonstrate the skill and articulate the steps or thinking procedures that are involved
• Guided practice, where students start practicing the skill while you help and observe (or in small groups where they can help each other)

If you’re creating worksheets or reading materials from scratch, tailor those to students’ learning levels (and other educational needs) as well.

Lesson plan examples

Ready to see how all these pieces come together? Below are two complete lesson plan examples that demonstrate how to adapt this basic format to different subjects and grade levels. Use them as models when filling out your own template.

Frequently asked questions about writing lesson plans

What is a backward design lesson plan?

A backward design lesson plan is designed by working backward to decide how you’ll help students achieve the lesson objective. To use the backward design process, follow these steps:

• Identify the learning objective: Define the specific knowledge, skill, or concept students should learn by the end of the lesson.
• Gather data about students’ level of readiness: Consider students’ current level of proficiency in order to tailor the lesson to their needs.
• Create an assessment: Develop an assignment that measures whether students have achieved the learning objective.  
• Choose lesson activities and materials: Create an instructional plan and choose or create materials that fill the gap between what students know now and what they need to know to succeed on the assessment.

Need help with lesson planning? Ask Quillbot’s AI Chat to brainstorm lesson activities and assessment ideas that align with your learning objectives.

What does a lesson plan look like?

A lesson plan looks like a chart or a list with headings for the different parts of the lesson, such as:

• Lesson topic
• Unit topic
• Learning objective
• Learning standards addressed
• Materials needed
• Procedures
• Assessment

Quillbot’s Lesson Plan Generator is a fast and free way to explore examples of lesson plans for different subjects.

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment?

Formative assessment is an ongoing process that teachers use to monitor student learning and adjust instruction based on what they discover. It can include quizzes, writing prompts, discussions, exit tickets, and other activities that provide evidence of students’ understanding during a lesson or unit.

Summative assessment evaluates how well students have met learning objectives at the end of a unit or course, often through a final exam, project, or other graded assignment. While formative assessment helps teachers decide how to adjust instruction, summative assessment measures what students have learned.

Understanding the difference between formative and summative assessment helps teachers choose the best instructional strategies for their students. Quillbot’s AI Chat can help you brainstorm ways to use effective strategies in your classroom.

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