What is Lesson Plan?

A lesson plan is a written outline of what will be taught in a specific session, including the learning objectives, warm-up activities, main content, cool-down, and assessment points. Good lesson planning ensures that every session is purposeful, appropriately challenging, and aligned to your wider progression framework. It also provides consistency — if a coach is absent, another qualified person can deliver the session using the plan.

Effective lesson plans for children's activity sessions typically include: the age group and ability level, the session objectives (what children should be able to do by the end), equipment needed, a warm-up that prepares children physically and sets the tone, the main activities with progressions and regressions for different ability levels, key teaching points and common errors to watch for, a cool-down or plenary that reinforces learning, and notes on differentiation for any children with additional needs.

The discipline of lesson planning improves teaching quality even for experienced coaches. It forces you to think about what you are actually trying to achieve in each session, to plan appropriate progressions, and to consider how you will assess whether children have met the objectives. Lesson plans do not need to be lengthy documents — a single A4 sheet or a template card is sufficient. Many businesses create termly schemes of work that build systematically towards end-of-term assessments or grading.