Foundation Skills/The why, what and how of planning a lesson/session sequence/What can be included in a lesson plan?

The challenge for teachers, when working to tight timeframes, is to decide what should be included in a lesson plan. The level of detail will depend on your context, particularly if your team uses a template. Whatever you use, the lesson plan needs to suit your teaching style and context.


 * A lesson plan needs to have sufficient detail in it so that another lecturer in your subject area could comfortably deliver the lesson.

To get the most out of a learning session time and effort needs to be put into the planning. A great place to start is with a framework. Two frameworks are suggested here: the 5 Ws and a Three-part framework. Once you've decided what to include, think about the timing of each event or episode and how the lesson will flow and be organised.

5 Ws
 * 1) Who are the students/participants?
 * 2) Where is the learning session to take place? – environment, resources.
 * 3) When will it occur? – time of day, length of session.
 * 4) Why is the session being run? – the intent and aim of the session.
 * 5) What is the focus and content of the session?