Lesson Plan Template
A reusable scaffold that fixes the categories a lesson plan must address — aims, learners, materials, procedure, anticipated problems — while leaving the content empty for the writer to fill. Templates standardise plans so colleagues, observers, and the teacher's future self can read them quickly, and they prompt the planner to consider categories that an unguided draft would skip.
Common formats
Three formats dominate. The CELTA-style headed plan separates a cover sheet (context, learners, main aim, Subsidiary Aims, target language analysis, anticipated problems and solutions, materials, references) from a procedure table on a landscaped page with columns for stage, aim, time, interaction, and procedure. The format is verbose by design — it forces the trainee teacher to articulate decisions that experienced practitioners make implicitly — and remains the template most widely taught on initial training courses such as CELTA and Trinity CertTESOL.
The narrative plan replaces the procedure table with prose: a paragraph per stage describing what the teacher and learners do and why. Narrative plans suit reflective writing and DELTA-style assignments where the explanation matters as much as the procedure, and they pair naturally with a Lesson Rationale. They are slower to scan during teaching, so practitioners often draft a narrative plan during preparation and then pull a procedure summary onto a single sheet for the lesson itself.
The table format compresses everything into rows and columns: stage name, time, interaction (T-S, S-S, individual), materials, and a brief description of teacher and learner actions. Tables sit closest to the working teacher's reality — visible at a glance, easy to revise mid-lesson — and most institutional templates converge on this shape. Ofsted-style plans, primary-school plans, and many in-service plans use a variant.
Choosing a format
The template should match the audience. A plan written for the planner's own use can be sparse; a plan submitted for assessment must carry its rationale; a plan archived for cover or future reuse must be self-explanatory months later. CELTA-style plans serve training; table plans serve daily teaching; narrative plans serve reflection. Most experienced teachers move between formats, using the headed plan when reviewing target language carefully, the table when execution clarity matters, and the narrative when reflecting on what worked.
Templates are tools, not deliverables. A plan filled out faithfully but disconnected from the lesson learners actually need will produce a teachable session no one will benefit from.
References
- Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching (3rd ed.). Macmillan Education.
- Watkins, P. (2005). Learning to Teach English: A Practical Introduction for New Teachers. Delta Publishing.