This document provides guidance on effective lesson planning. It discusses key elements that should be included in a lesson plan such as learning objectives, activities, assessment strategies, and evaluation. The document also includes a sample lesson plan template that breaks the plan down into sections like context, objectives, activities, assessment, and evaluation. Overall, the document emphasizes that thorough planning is important for facilitating successful learning, selecting appropriate teaching strategies, and reflecting on areas for improvement.

1. Planning to Teach
and Facilitate
Learning

2. Session aims and objectives
• to help students prepare for effective
teaching and learning
• consider ways of adapting plans to include
all learners

3. learning
What do I want the
children to learn?
Effective teaching
Teacher employing
a range of
strategies
facilitating
opportunities to
learn.
Reflection and
consideration of
‘where next’
Sensitive and
focused
assessment
Feedback to
learner

4. Why Plan? What is the point?
Wider framework (medium-term and long-term
planning)
Selecting appropriate teaching and learning
strategies
Identify what you expect to see/hear
Considered all learners?
Detail beforehand: e.g. layers of questioning
What resources?
How to organise
What about you and your development?

5. Key elements of good lesson plans
• lesson objectives which can be shared with pupils
• a clear structure for the lesson
• notes on key questions and teaching points
• notes on specific activities
• notes relating to needs of individuals or groups
• a note of how any additional support will be used

6. Lesson plan template
Section A
Within the context of this lesson, what specific
actions are you going to take to advance your
professional development in relation to Standards,
Action Plan and National Priorities?

7. Using your previous lesson evaluation,
identify specific actions to support pupil
progress
What are you carrying over from the last lesson?
Consider the cycle (slide three).
Evaluation of the previous lesson will have highlighted
some key considerations and implications for the current
lesson. It may be that one of the learning objectives was
not achieved – or you need to provide more interactive
tasks – or that you need to regroup pupils to place them
with particular partners, etc.
Spending time on this allows you to recognise how you
need to shape this lesson, to support pupil learning.

8. Learning Objectives
What is it you want your pupils to know, understand, or
be able to do by the end of this lesson?
Create a list of ‘openers’, such as:
solve. . ., use. . ., describe . . ., explain . . ., compare . . .,
demonstrate . . ., contrast . . ., match. . ., draw. . ., measure
. . ., justify . . ., select, etc. etc.
Three learning objectives is enough – any more than that
and your lesson may become too complex. Keep them
short – keep them simple – pitch them at an appropriate
level - based on assessment.

9. Differentiated Learning Outcomes
• In an attempt to support a range of learners and to inform
assessment of a wider spectrum of achievement within one
class group, we can recognise three levels of response to the
learning objective:
Pupils who are ‘working towards’…
Pupils who are ‘achieving’…
Pupils who are ‘working beyond’…
By thinking carefully about what you anticipate seeing or
hearing at each level, this will help you to recognise more
easily which pupils need more support or alternative tasks.

10. Learning Across the Curriculum
• There may be links to other ‘moments’ of learning in the
day or the week to connect with
• It may be that the connection is between ‘subject areas’,
or key concepts that have already been introduced
• You may also want to identify other types of learning
such as social skills in working with others
• It may be (for example) that your focus is on how you are
incorporating technology into this lesson

11. Resources
Thinking about resources needed for this lesson,
will this help you to plan ahead and be ready
before the lesson starts
Think about the detail there is nothing more
annoying than not having a whiteboard marker
when you need one.
Remember that people are a central resource in
learning and teaching.

12. Time & Learning Objectives
• Time can either be written as how long
each task takes e.g. 5 mins, or the time on
the clock throughout the lesson e.g.
10.25am.
• Note which Learning Objective (LO1 etc)
the activity relates to so that it is clear
what the intention of the task is.

13. Pupil Learning Activities
This will chart a step-by-step progression of the lesson
• Sometimes you may use description of the activity only
• Sometimes you may find it helpful to write exactly what
you will say to introduce it
• Think about ALL of your learners so that any inclusion
strategies you have identified that may help specific
individuals, may be helpful to all pupils
• You may also want to identify the role of other adults
here

14. Teaching Points/strategies/teacher role
Think of teaching points like ‘quality’ points.
For example, if you were teaching a specific skill, you may
want to add those ‘don’t forget to…’ statements that remind
pupils of the correct techniques to use.
This is information that has the potential to enrich the
outcome. There may be similarities here with what you have
identified in your differentiated learning outcomes, as they
might act as criteria to know whether the task is being done
correctly, and at what level it is being demonstrated.
What role is/are the teacher/pupils taking in each activity?

15. Organisation and Risk Assessment
The management of groups in the space
you have: e.g. how are you going to get
them into groups or move between
activities
Any health and safety considerations?

16. Assessment for Learning Strategies
• How are you going to check to see if learning is taking
place?
• For example, are you going to provide a short peer
assessment moment, where pupils use the given criteria
to make judgments about their partner’s work?
• Are you going to ask for responses from all, or target your
chosen pupils for that lesson who represent your
‘working towards’, ‘achieving’, or ‘working beyond’?
• Are you going to use layers of questioning to search for
deeper understanding?
• How will you extract the information you need, to know
how to proceed?

17. The Four basic Elements of AfL:
• Sharing Learning Goals
• Effective Questioning
• Self and peer evaluation
• Effective feedback
You need to be able to utilise these

18. Lesson Evaluation (Section F)
This is organised into 3 parts (2 parts ‘pupil’: 1 part ‘teacher’)
• Firstly, To what extent have the learning outcomes been
achieved in relation to the learning objectives? :did the
children learn what you hoped they would learn in relation to
the learning objectives? If they did, what helped them? If they
did not, why not? This helps you to focus on the three areas of
differentiated pupil achievement.
• Then, Reflect upon your professional development including
the impact and outcomes of the actions identified in Box A:
What was good about your teaching today? Did you make
progress with your personal targets? What will you focus on
next?

19. Reflect upon pupil progress including the impact and outcomes
of the actions identified in Box B:
Consider those children who found the tasks difficult and made
less progress. What might you need to provide in the next
lesson that presents the learning in a different way?

20. ‘A rehearsal of thought on paper’
• Detail in the thinking
beforehand is likely to
contribute to a successful
lesson
• The more prepared you
are, the more confident
you are likely to be
• Your planning is a vehicle
for your learning – the
more you invest, the more
effective you become as a
teacher