How to create a lesson plan?

The same way, an architect creates a plan of the house before building it, teachers must create a good lesson plan before going to the classroom. And this is really important, because if we don't see the value of a good lesson plan, then, probably, we will have to pay very much in the future for that mistake.

Every country has different standards, contents, methodologies and strategies to teach their subjects. But at least, a good lesson plan must have the following aspects:

1.- Annual Plan: it must contain general aspects for the whole year like; information of the teacher and the class, skills and expected learnings, units, schedule, resources, and bibliography.

2.- Monthly plan: Here we are going to be more specific, and we must write down the name of the teacher, subject, unit and lessons, the skills we are pretending to develop in our students, the level of the class and the month. But at the same time it can contain the daily plan.

3.- Daily plan: And in here, again we must specify the unit we are working with, the date, the quantity of hours we are going to work, the content (concepts, procedure and values), the expected learnings for the day, activities explained step by step, the resources we will need and the type and date of evaluation.

As a teacher of English, I try to be very detailed in all the activities I will work during the day. And even it can sound redundant, but being very specific, we will have the whole work done already. After that, we have to find the material to create the class. The more specific we are, the better.

This is a process that never ends, and as teachers, we are always changing and fixing our lesson plans in order to be updated and connected with the reality.

If you want, you can share other aspects that a good lesson plan must have, so we make it even better.