The Truth About Lesson Planning 

The first truth about lesson planning is a paradox:

In a perfect world, it wouldn’t even exist.

Designing curriculum and instruction is its own science, and a difficult one at that. When well-designed programs (e.g., Direct Instruction) are in place, the heavy lifting of content analysis, sequencing and integrating of concepts, and field-testing of lessons falls on teams of people who specialize in it. What’s left for the teacher is not really planning but preparation—previewing, rehearsing, and making sure hand outs are ready to go. That’s a very different job.

But here’s the second truth about lesson planning:

Most teachers don’t have access to these programs.

The best, most research-driven materials tend to exist in reading, and to a lesser extent, math. What about the history teacher? The shop teacher? The teacher working in a school that buys a bunch of shiny hot garbage for them to use, or makes everyone design their own curriculum from scratch? In these contexts, lesson planning becomes unavoidable. And since many of us are, or will one day be, in those situations, it pays to know how to craft a lesson based on principles of lesson design. 

Which brings me to the third, perhaps most uncomfortable, truth about lesson planning:

Some teachers don’t know how to do it very well.

Universities don’t help. Those four-page lesson templates I had to fill out in my teacher prep program? Practically useless.  

Schools and districts don’t help. Those “word-smithed” learning objectives that satisfy an administrator but don’t guide the lesson? A bureaucratic distraction. 

What teachers really need is a stripped-down, classroom-ready framework to help them plan lessons in the limited time they are given. For example, the following (which you might recognize as the FAST Framework) is the lesson planning process I use: 

1. Begin with the end in mind. Identify the independent practice/assessment students will do at the end of the lesson. The learning objective should align with it perfectly. Forget the compliance games—objectives are for you, not principals, and not even really for your students. They tell you how to coordinate the rest of the elements of the plan, which I explain below.  

2. Plan Models. Decide exactly how you’ll show students the key ideas, expert thinking, and/or procedures that they will do at the end of the lesson. I wrote Just Tell Them to address this step. Often at this point, you’ll realize there’s too much to model in one lesson. That’s your cue to trim or modify the independent practice and/or the learning objective. 

3. Plan Review. Ask: what do students need to review before you model the new thing to them? If what you list to review becomes so extensive – or it’s not truly review, because it’s new – that it requires a whole new lesson, split the lesson. You can only teach so much in any one lesson, and you must ensure students have the essential prerequisites before having them work on material that assumes they’ve already mastered those prerequisites.  

4. Plan Guided Practice. Plan out how to release students into independent practice. This begins with heavy supports and prompts, with students gradually taking on more of the work. In math this might look like combining steps or completing fewer steps for them each time. In writing or a class discussion, it might mean slowly removing sentence starters and scaffolds. The shape is always the same: a gradual release of the heavy lifting from teacher to student. 

5. Plan Final Check. End the guided practice sequence with a final check that is identical in kind to what you expect in independent practice. You may also plan key questions that allow you to inquire into their mental models. If everyone is showing you they know this stuff, release them into independent practice. If your check indicates that 1-3 students can’t swim on their own, pull those few for a small group while others work independently. 

6. Plan Preview. Finally, craft the opening. This is where you provide a rationale, connect to prior knowledge, and/or ask easy orientation questions to get momentum. 

You might have noticed that we planned this out of order from how we’re going to teach it. That’s the trick: teachers begin with the end, but the sequence you’ll actually follow in class looks like this: 

Preview → Learning Objective → Review → Modeling → Guided Practice → Final Check → Independent Practice 

Now, let’s write a lesson for teaching the topic of horizontal addition using the “counting on strategy” in this exact lesson structure, but written in the order it is taught:  

Preview 

T: If you had to choose between the fast way to recess, or the slow way to recess, which way would you choose?  
 
S: The fast way!  

T: So far, we’ve been doing addition the slow way. Do you want to learn the shortcut that mathematicians use to add the fast way? 

S: Yes! 

Learning Objective 

T: By the end of today, you’ll be able to solve addition problems the fast way by saying the first number, counting on, and writing the answer. 

Review 

T: But first we have to review some things. 
– Prompts students to count on chorally from a variety of numbers. 

– Choral practice of addition the “slow way” (counting every number: 1, 2, 3, 4… then 5, 6, 7). 

– Reminds: Remember the rule of the equal sign: the number on this side has to be the same as the number on the other side. 

Modeling (I do) 

T: I think you’re ready for the “fast way.” Watch what I do differently. 

– Demonstrates the “fast way” (start at 4, then count on 1, 2, 3 → 7). 
– Models the fast way twice; the second time thinking aloud step by step. 

Guided Practice (We do) 

T: Now do it with me. 

– Students use mini-whiteboards. 
– First problems: teacher directs every step (Start at 5… now count on 1, 2… Write the Answer). 
– Next problems: cues are reduced until students are solving independently (Start at 6… now what do we do?… Yes… Write the Answer). 

Closure (Final Check) 

T: Everyone solve 6 + 2 on your board — 3, 2, 1… show! 
– All students hold up answers. 

T: How is this faster than the way we used to do it? Tell your partner.  

– Teacher listens in.  

Independent Practice (You do) 

T: Oh, I couldn’t fool you! I think you’re ready. On your desk is your IP. I need pencils on the first problem.

(Checks).

T: Pencils writing in 3, 2, 1.

(Scans, insists, circulates.) 

– Students complete a large problem set on paper that requires them to use the new count-on method. 

 
That’s it. That’s the plan. No 4-page mumbo jumbo lesson template that forces you to acknowledge fake learning styles, requires a home or real-world connection, or makes you identify the values and inquiry skills that the lesson is supposed to cultivate. Too much advice out there either makes planning obtuse and unworkable or reduces it to posting learning objectives and assigning activities. Neither extreme helps. 

And here’s the final truth about lesson planning:

It’s really hard to get right, and even harder to get right every time.

The best plans focus on the big ideas that give students the most mileage, select faultless examples and non-examples so it’s near impossible to develop a misconception, and build in cumulative review to prevent forgetting. They connect seamlessly to what came before and set up what comes next, rather than existing as islands unto themselves. Without evidence-based programs, teachers are left to do all of this on their own—for every unit, every topic, all year long. The challenge is staggering: move vertically and horizontally between past and future teachers and lessons, design crystal clear explanations and juicy questions based on deep subject knowledge, and control difficulty with well-designed partial problems and independent practice problems that are properly distributed and interleaved, and stitch lessons together so they build into a coherent curriculum. 

So yes, design is complex and demanding, and teachers are strapped for time. And it’s frequently misunderstood. Principals tend to evaluate what they can see—the delivery—but rarely have the training to spot flaws in lesson design. A charismatic teacher might get a glowing review, while the actual lesson is misaligned or overloaded. Ultimately, it’s the students that pay the price, especially those that depend on predictable, focused, structured teaching. 

Where does that leave us with lesson planning? It leaves us with the reality that a substantial number of teachers without immaculately designed materials need to learn this complex skill, and all complex skills require intense training and deliberate practice. With a lesson framework that cuts through the noise (e.g. FAST), sufficient and protected planning time during the school day, and instructional coaching and peer support to boost the process, it’s possible to make it work.