Every teacher understands the importance of lesson plans. Coming prepared to class, with clearly set learning goals and a few fun activities to make your students excited to be in your classroom is the standard you strive toward.
But sitting down and writing them lesson plans for each class is sometimes more trouble than it’s worth—it’s not like your principal does that great of a job reading them. Fortunately, weekly lesson plans make that tedious part of your job way easier.
Writing lesson plans on a weekly basis can be a real life savior, and you can do it with even less effort if you have a quality weekly lesson plan template to rely on.
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What Is a Lesson Plan Template?
Lesson plan templates are essentially planner forms designed to keep your lesson planning tasks in check. A high-quality template typically contains the following sections:
- Lesson plan objective
- Materials
- Learning activities
- Assessment methods
- Homework assignment
Lesson plan templates differ based on the grade, subject, or scope of lesson planning you intend to do, as shown in the table below:
| Types of Lesson Plans | Lesson Plan Examples |
| By grade | Preschool Kindergarten First grade Second grade Middle school High school |
| By subject | Math Science English Social studies Foreign languages |
| By period | Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly |
These templates are convenient and help you be more organized, saving you time in the process. They also often come in fun, vibrant designs, making the task at hand slightly less dull.
Why Teachers Use Weekly Lesson Plan Templates
Lesson plans for individual classes allow you to go into great detail about what your specific lessons will look like. Still, if you have a lot of classes each week, you’ll be shuffling through dozens upon dozens of papers with individual lesson plans. A yearly lesson plan covers the whole course and focuses on general objectives that you and your students need to achieve, so it’s more of an abstract overview. Weekly lesson plans hit that sweet spot between too much and too little information.
Weekly lesson plan templates allow you to do most of the planning in advance and leave you with more time for other activities during the week. Yes, weekly planning may require you to sit down at your desk for a while (maybe even on weekends), but the rest of your work week remains free from the terrors of administration!
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What Does a Weekly Lesson Plan Template Look Like?
You can find two basic types of weekly templates:
- Weekly lesson plan templates for multiple subjects
- Weekly lesson plan templates for one subject
The first option doesn’t let you go into too much detail. A weekly plan for multiple subjects provides an overview of the week ahead, allowing you to add only a few notes for each subject. These templates are often editable tables with weekdays in columns and subject names in rows.
Single-subject weekly lesson plan templates offer a greater variety of fields you can fill out. You can add the objectives you want to achieve, the materials you will bring to class, the activities you’ve planned, the assessment methods you’ll use, and the homework you’ll assign at the end of each lesson. The template is typically split into five sections for each workday in a week.
How To Create Your Own Weekly Lesson Plan Template
The first step to creating your own template is knowing what you want to do with it. Do you want a detailed guide or just a weekly overview? Are you planning for single or multiple subjects?
You can look up a lesson plan template structure online, but you don’t have to copy it completely if it doesn’t make sense for your organizational style or needs.
The internet is full of different weekly templates that have different layouts and sections. Identify the sections that you find most useful and leave out those that wouldn’t do much to facilitate your lesson planning process.
The next step is to choose the format or style that’s best for you. If you want something quick and clean, you can use Google Docs and create a simple table. You can also go with something more visually stimulating by using Canva or Adobe Illustrator if you know your way around those tools. Creating a beautiful template with different patterns and illustrations can inject some fun into the drab administrative task of lesson planning.
Online Lesson Plan Templates vs. Ready-Made Lesson Plans
Struggling to create a lesson plan template versatile enough to be used for a variety of grades and subjects you teach?
Don’t fret because you are not alone! Nobody asked for graphic design skills when you applied to be a math or English teacher. You shouldn’t lose any sleep over making a lesson plan template when there are numerous lesson plan templates online that suit every style and need—and look amazing.
Still, if you really want to cut down on your preparation time, you can skip looking for a template and go for a ready-made lesson plan instead.
You can find thousands of lesson plans online for every subject, grade, and specific topic. The only problem is making sure you pick one that works for you and meets your teaching requirements. You can find:
- Free lesson plans—You can give these a try as they cost nothing, but be warned that most free lesson plans are of low quality. They don’t meet official curriculum standards, have vague objectives, and don’t provide enough diverse activities so that students of varying learning styles can get across the finish line
- Paid lesson plans—These plans can be too expensive, going up to $20 per item. The problem is that you get only a snippet as a preview before you pay the full price, and you never know what you’re going to get. You can end up spending hundreds of dollars for lesson plans that are too general and repetitive or just don’t work for your student group
Get Top-Quality Lesson Plans Without Breaking the Bank With Teach Simple
Teachers spend hundreds of dollars on online materials every year. With websites that charge per download, buying ready-made lesson plans can make you feel like you need another job just to afford the first one.
You don’t have to go down this road. Teach Simple enables you to access unlimited ready-made lesson plans, templates, and other teaching resources for a single monthly fee. And you don’t even need to commit to a plan before you try our products out for a full month free of charge without any limitations.
You can use our website to find all kinds of materials for different subjects from preschool all the way to grade 12—no matter what topic you are teaching that day.
If you’re staring at your empty paper and pushing yourself to think fast of good ideas for your next week’s classes, you can try some of these plans:
- Animal Science Unit: All About Tigers
- Number & Operations: Grouping Objects & Number Lines
- Measurement: Measuring Time
- Complete Book of Diagrams
- Data Analysis & Probability
- Geometry: Spatial Relationships
- Practical Science: Life and Living Activities for 6–8 Year Olds
- Activities Plus Grade 1
- Contractions Lesson Plan
- All About Holidays | Beginner Lesson Plan
- Research & Writing: Activities That Explore Family History
- Communicating Tough Feelings
- Carbohydrates and Lipids—5E Lesson Bundle
- The Big Bang Theory
- Crash Course Organic Chemistry: Episodes 11–15
What Makes Teach Simple Unique
Forget about browsing dozens of websites and taking out your credit card every five minutes to make another purchase that won’t meet your criteria in the end. With Teach Simple, you’ll have a reliable source of all the teaching materials you need. Here’s what makes our platform different:
- Revenue sharing—We’re in this job because we care deeply about the art of teaching. That’s why we want to show our support to teachers by giving 50% of all monthly revenue to our contributors
- High quality and standard alignment—Every teaching resource posted on Teach Simple has been created and reviewed by another experienced educator. This way, we ensure that our lesson plans and templates meet different curriculum requirements and align with official standards
- Special education resources—If you’re teaching students with special education needs, you know how tough it is to find online materials adapted to them. Teach Simple offers dozens of materials dedicated to SEN students
- Unlimited downloads—When you register for Teach Simple, you won’t have to invest in individual materials. For an affordable monthly fee, it’s an all-you-can-download deal
- Resource diversity—Looking for more than lesson plans and templates? Don’t worry; Teach Simple offers a variety of learning resources to make your lessons more enjoyable and successful, such as flash cards, games, e-books, audiobooks, worksheets, curriculums, projects, graphics, ESL materials, and various learning activities
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Plan Out Your Lessons With Ease by Using Teach Simple
With our easy-to-use platform, you’re minutes away from finding a lesson plan or template that suits you perfectly—whatever the subject, grade, or period you want your plan to cover.Sign up for free using our 30-day trial and check out what Teach Simple has to offer. During this period, you can make unlimited downloads without any commitments to continuing your subscription afterward. When you realize how much easier your job can be thanks to Teach Simple, we’re confident we’ll see you back!
