How To Build A Lesson Plan (Plus Template!) -

Nov 10, 2022

In order to build online courses that delivers your desired outcomes, you must make sure that your lesson plans are well-planned. Each lesson plan represents an essential building block which can be climbed towards your overall goal of the course.

Let's discuss how to design a lesson that hits home.

Before you begin

Before you dive into the planning of your lesson, you should start by asking some key questions that will help you decide the focus of your class. As the topic expert, the breadth of this course content is clear in your head, but your students are still figuring the details in the course of learning. Make sure to keep a clear focus on each lesson while keeping an overall picture in mind . This can help your students gain knowledge within an environment that allows them to use it independently and remember it all the time!

  1. What do your students already have in mind? It's the topics you covered in prior classes, or the basic information you'd like your students to be able to master. Do they know all the necessary definitions to comprehend the current topic? Do you have any gaps that need to close before you dive in? This will be the beginning point in this lesson.
  2. What are they required to be learning today? Keep an eye at the target here - be clear about your goals otherwise you'll be lost on the path! Make a target for this lesson. Do students know how to create a distinct value proposition, or should be prepared to write a great cover letter? What single concept or skill do you want this lesson teach your pupils? Be sure to keep it short and easy, and if the lesson is complicated, you may think about splitting it up into smaller lessons in order to not overwhelm your students by overloading them with too much information.
  3. How can you best secure it Once you've established the objective for the day's class You can then decide the best way to deliver the information. Do you think this information is best presented through video, or is more effectively explained through illustrations and text? Could you represent this as an information graphic? What activities for practice will help students to lock the new skills they have acquired?

There is more to it than just downloading your mind onto paper. Consider what you can do to improve your writing skills.

After you've got these three fundamental concepts in your mind, let's apply them in your lesson plan.

Set the scene

Begin each new lesson by setting the scene the students will follow. It is possible to do this with three steps:

  1. Spend a few minutes to reflect on your lessons from the lesson you took last time,
  2. Give a high-level outline of the lesson today will cover, and
  3. Teach students the essential abilities or lessons they'll achieve by the conclusion of the class.

Consider, in particular, if any content from previous lessons can be applied to the new lesson. Never miss an opportunity to draw examples from old content while teaching new information! This is a fantastic way to assist your students gain a sense of context for what could be a complicated array of facts. If you can build bridges between the old and the newly acquired knowledge, you can create that lightbulb moment for students to understand how all the pieces are connected.

It's more than the process of defining expectations, or summarizing them It's an educational strategy concept. By reminding students of previous lessons, you help to make connections between the old and fresh content so that they understand how everything fits together. When you share the key elements of the lesson today, you establish the framework that will allow them to contextualize everything that follows. If they know what your ultimate goal is, then they'll become more attentive to what you speak about the abilities from then onwards. This brief process in the first part of every lesson helps students to build their knowledge throughout all of the lessons.

Explain the new data

This is the main component of every lesson plan. If it's time to present new material, make sure to make it clear and simple. Explain new concepts using the most simple method you can. Take your least able student in mind, then explain the concepts with their perspective Even your most talented learners will gain from the ease!

Make sure you use plenty of examples to help students gain a sense of context for the latest information. A good tip is to employ a variety of examples that draw from the general understanding and specific knowledge. You can, for instance, and should give concrete examples grounded in the subject of your course For more abstract ideas but it might help to describe concepts using everyday examples that everyone could relate to. Think about using fruits and vegetables to explain abstract economic concepts, or using nursery rhymes to explain music theory. It doesn't mean that you need to create a mystifying hypothetical examples like the ones you might have found in your high school test in math - simply search for common situations that in which you can explain complex concepts so that your students can ground their understanding of the new concepts by relating it to something they are familiar with.

The students learn in a variety of methods - many through written text, some via video and others through graphic design or activities like writing by hand. When you are able to clearly explain things with a professional-looking article or video is a great place to start you can think about using a range options to help make your lessons stay in place.

  • Design an infographic in order to draw attention to key aspects of the course
  • Provide fill-in-the-blank notes so students will be able to follow you and pay attention for important information queues
  • Connect key words and concepts to other articles or videos for students to access extra learning resources
  • Create a slide deck with key elements that students can use for review purposes.
  • The sky's the limit - if you can think of an alternative way to present the information you have, your learners will gain! The course builder offers several different content types to suit your requirements wherever ideas take you.
 course builder

Practice makes perfect

Even when you are taking the online class there is a variety of practice activities you can teach students:

  • Students should be asked to define key concepts and use the concepts in a paragraph giving them an opportunity to put things into their own terms.
  • Students should be encouraged to rephrase ideas through the conversion of your notes into quizzes, similar to the ones you might see on a quiz
  • If you are part of an online community or class, encourage students to discuss their reflections or summaries on an appropriate thread for the lesson.

Assessments

It's also necessary to assess student knowledge. Although you shouldn't be doing this on a regular basis, it's a helpful tool to check student understanding on important learning milestones.

The course platform of's allows you to easily deliver student assessments with tests, quizzes and tasks that test your students. tests, but it is important to take into consideration future exams when planning lessons. When you plan a sequence of lessons, be sure to keep these questions in mind for the future assessment:

  • What facts and skills that you learn from this course are essential to help a student succeed during this course?
  • There are any specifics in this course which students should be reminded of, to be sure that they are remembered?

Make a checklist of these questions while you plan your lessons. By the time you reach the end of your course and are ready to build your assessment, you'll have a list of key questions that you'll use on your quiz or assignment. When you draw questions from a series of lessons, you help students build connections between various batches of knowledge and come up with a more coherent learning experience.

Make a lesson plans

Are you ready to begin creating innovative lesson plans? We've created a downloadable lesson plan template for you below so you can build your own.