How do you write a lesson plan?
A lesson plan sets out, in one page, what your students will be able to do by the end of the class and how you will get them there. Write the objective first, then the target language, then four timed stages: warm up, presentation, practice and assessment. Allocate minutes to each stage so the class stays on track.
Key takeaways
- A lesson plan is a working document for you, not an essay for an inspector. One page is enough.
- Start with the objective. Everything else in the plan exists to serve it.
- Put a time against every stage. Running out of time is the most common problem new teachers have.
- Five to ten target vocabulary items is plenty for a single class.
- Some schools ask to see your plan in advance, so keep it legible to someone who is not you.
What goes at the top of a lesson plan?
The header carries the basic administrative detail: your name, the school, the grade level, the week, the date, the subject and the unit. It takes thirty seconds to fill in and it is what makes the plan findable again when you want to reuse it next term.
Under the header comes the part that actually matters, the objective. An objective describes what the student can do at the end of the class, not what you intend to cover. “The students will be able to order food in a restaurant using the target vocabulary” is an objective. “Restaurant vocabulary” is a topic. The difference shows up immediately in how the class runs.
Finish the top section with your target language, five to ten vocabulary items or one grammar structure, and the materials you need. Listing materials is not busywork. It is the step that stops you arriving at the classroom without the flashcards.
How long should each part of a lesson take?
The table below is the stage timing we teach on our own courses, scaled to a sixty minute class. Shorten each stage proportionally for a forty minute class. These are typical allocations rather than rules, and experienced teachers move the boundaries around depending on how the group is responding.
| Stage | Typical time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Warm up | 5 to 10 minutes | Review the previous lesson through a game, a song or quick questions |
| Presentation | 15 to 20 minutes | Introduce the target vocabulary or structure and check understanding |
| Practice | 20 to 25 minutes | Controlled then freer activities, usually a game, that drill the target language |
| Assessment and wrap up | 5 to 10 minutes | Check what stuck, through questions, participation notes or a short task |
What is a warm up and why does it matter?
The warm up is the first five to ten minutes and it does two jobs at once. It recycles the previous lesson so the language does not evaporate between classes, and it settles the group into English before you ask anything demanding of them.
A game, a song or a quick round of questions all work. Write down which one you are using and how long you are giving it, because a warm up that overruns eats the practice stage, and the practice stage is where the learning actually happens.
How do you present new language?
Presentation is the middle of the class and usually the largest single block. State plainly in the plan which vocabulary or structure you are introducing and how you are introducing it: flashcards, a short video, board work, a demonstration, a story.
Put a time against it. Fifteen to twenty minutes is normal for a sixty minute class. If you find yourself planning forty minutes of presentation, the lesson has become a lecture, and with language learners that rarely lands.
How do you practise the target language?
This is the stage that decides whether anyone remembers the lesson. Plan an activity that forces students to produce the target language rather than just recognise it: a game, a role play, a survey, a competition between teams.
Write the activity out in enough detail that you could hand the plan to a colleague and they could run it. How the game is played, how points are scored, how you group the students. Vagueness here is what produces the classes that fall apart at minute thirty five.
How do you assess students at the end of a class?
Assessment does not have to mean a test. In most English classes it means checking, before the students leave, whether the objective you wrote at the top was met.
Say in the plan exactly how you will do it: calling on students at random, scoring participation in the practice game, a two minute written task, or a quick thumbs up round. Naming the method in advance is what turns assessment from a vague intention into something you actually do.
Does a lesson plan need to be followed exactly?
No. A lesson plan is a guideline, not a script. Classes differ, groups differ, and an activity that took eight minutes with one class will take eighteen with another. Going over time on a stage is not a failure.
What the plan gives you is a place to return to when the class drifts, and a record of what you did that you can improve next time. That is the whole value of it. Teachers who plan get better faster, mostly because they can see what they changed.
Where to go next
Lesson planning sits alongside the other classroom skills you will use every day. Once the structure is comfortable, the next things worth working on are the activities that fill the practice stage and the techniques that keep a class speaking.
- Read our TEFL pronunciation activities for European English teachers for practice stage ideas you can drop straight into a plan.
- Read our guide to immersion learning in the English classroom for how to keep a lesson running in English throughout.
- Start with the teaching English guides hub if you want the full set of classroom skills guides in order.
If you have not yet qualified, our Ofqual regulated Level 5 TEFL Diploma covers lesson planning in full, with tutor feedback on the plans you write.
Last reviewed: 25 August 2026 by The TEFL Institute of Ireland.
