How to plan and choose great lessons

Create engaging, relevant lessons, tailored to your pupils’ needs

Lesson planning tool

It can be tempting to start from an appealing activity or resource when planning lessons. But we should always start with a clear picture of what we want the pupils to learn and then find activities and resources that help us achieve our objectives.

Our guide gives you a series of steps to follow, with learning objectives and intended learning outcomes as your starting point. Following our steps helps to make sure your programme is progressive, sequenced and coherent. It also makes sure appropriate assessment is integral and not an afterthought.

Checklist for choosing safe, effective lessons

When choosing lesson plans from others it’s vital to make sure they are safe, balanced, factually accurate and effective.

You’ll find many high quality resources here on our site and linked from our Programme Builders. If you’re looking further afield, our checklist will show you what to look out for — and what to avoid. The checklist is ideal for those new to planning PSHE lessons. It can be used as an audit and evaluation tool, or as part of staff Inset.

Download the tools