Lesson plan · Teaching · Classroom
How to write a lesson plan, with a 40-minute example
By T. Krause
A lesson plan needs a goal that the last five minutes can test, and a list of activities won't give you that. Here is how to write one, followed through an invented 40-minute water cycle lesson, including the exit question that needed rewriting.
To write a lesson plan, write one sentence saying what students will be able to do by the end. Decide how you'll check it, then plan the warm-up, the main activity and the practice that lead there. Put minutes on each stage and make sure they add up to the length of the lesson.
Writing the check before the activities sounds backwards, but it stops a lesson filling up with things that are pleasant to do and don't reach the goal. Carnegie Mellon's teaching centre describes course design in the same order, starting from the objectives and moving on to assessments and teaching methods. Its advice is for whole courses, and we've applied it here to a single lesson.
Five questions a plan answers
| Stage | Question |
|---|---|
| Learning goal | What can they do by the end? |
| Warm-up | What do they need to recall first? |
| Main activity | How do they meet the new idea? |
| Practice | Where do they try it with less help? |
| Exit ticket | How do I know it worked? |
Those are the frames on our lesson plan template. The board's order is our own, and it fits a good deal of what Barak Rosenshine set out in Principles of Instruction, an article from American Educator in 2012. His list of research-based principles includes "Begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning", "Guide student practice", "Check for student understanding" and "Require and monitor independent practice". He doesn't use the term exit ticket. That's our label for one way of checking at the end.
A 40-minute water cycle lesson
The class, its teacher and the timing are invented. The science is real and comes from the US Geological Survey's water cycle page. The plan is on the sample board, labelled year 5.
The goal
Explain evaporation, condensation and rain.
Carnegie Mellon says objectives should be student-centred and "should use action verbs". It suggests finishing the sentence "students should be able to". "Explain" passes, since you can hear a student do it. "Understand the water cycle" would fail, because you can't see understanding from the front of a room.
The goal should also be small enough for the time you have. Three linked ideas in 40 minutes is on the edge. We keep it because the three are one story, and a teacher who knows their class might cut rain and save it for the next lesson.
The stages, with minutes
| Stage | Minutes | On the board |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-up | 5 | Where does a puddle go? |
| Main activity | 20 | Bag-on-the-window experiment, then draw the cycle in pairs |
| Practice | 10 | Label the diagram |
| Exit ticket | 5 | One sentence: why does it rain? |
The minutes add up to 40, the length of this lesson. Count them every time, as a plan with no room for handing out materials will overrun.
Warm-up. "Where does a puddle go?" gets students to recall something they've seen, and their answers show what they already think. It's a light version of Rosenshine's review. If an earlier lesson covered the states of water, use the warm-up to ask about that.
Main activity. A sealed bag with a little water in it goes on a sunny window, and droplets form on the inside of the plastic. It gives students something to explain with the words from the goal. USGS says "The sun's energy causes liquid water to evaporate into water vapor", and describes clouds as "water condensing in the atmosphere". The bag shows both on a small scale. Write the materials on the note, and have a plan for a dull day. Our teacher sets up one bag the day before, so there's something to look at either way.
Practice. Students label the diagram on their own, after drawing the cycle in pairs. That's the move from guided to independent practice in Rosenshine's list. He says effective teachers also stop to check understanding along the way, so this teacher walks round and looks at the labels while there's still time to help.
Testing the exit ticket against the goal
Read the two side by side:
- Goal: explain evaporation, condensation and rain
- Exit ticket: one sentence, why does it rain?
A student could answer "because clouds get heavy" and never mention evaporation. So the ticket tests one-third of the goal. A better version covers all of it in one sentence:
How can water from a puddle come back as rain?
Run this test on any plan. If the exit question could be answered without the thing you taught, change the question or the goal.
What the tickets do next
The teacher sorts the tickets into three piles: explains all of it, explains part of it, and doesn't yet. The piles decide how the next lesson starts. If the middle pile keeps leaving out condensation, the warm-up next time goes back to the droplets in the bag. Rosenshine's list ends with weekly and monthly review, so the water cycle comes back in later warm-ups too.
Mistakes to look for before you teach it
The goal describes the activity. "Students do the bag experiment" says what happens and leaves out what they learn from it.
Practice comes too late or not at all. If the main activity takes the whole lesson, students leave without trying it themselves. Cut the activity before you cut the practice.
The plan only works for the middle of the class. Add one note for students who finish early and one for those who get stuck. On a shared board, it stays with the plan when a colleague takes the class.
Nothing is written down afterwards. Add a note after the lesson saying what overran and what you'd change. Next year's plan starts from there.
Frequently asked questions
How detailed should a lesson plan be?
Detailed enough for someone else to teach from it. That's our test. A supply teacher should be able to read the goal, the minutes and the materials and know what to do. Your school may also have its own required format, which comes first.
Do I need a separate plan for every lesson?
If a sequence of lessons builds on itself, plan the unit first and each lesson's goal from that. A KWL chart at the start of the unit tells you what students already know, and that can change which lessons you need.
What if the lesson runs out of time?
Keep the exit ticket and cut practice short. You can't plan the next lesson without knowing where students got to, and a five-minute check gives you that.
Write your next plan
Open the lesson plan template and change the title and the goal first. Then write the exit question and check it against the goal, before you plan any activities. Share the board with a colleague or keep it for next year, and use a class brainstorm if you want to hear from everyone in the warm-up.