5-Min Pro · How to Plan a 45-Minute Lesson from Scratch

The idea — A lesson without a plan is a sequence of activities. A plan answers: what will learners be better able to do at the end? Everything else — tasks, stages, timing — serves that answer.

In practice — Start with the aim. Then ask: what is the final task that proves they got there? Then build backwards: what do they need to know to do that task? Those become your earlier stages.

One-minute task — Write your aim first. Then write the final production task. Then write the stages needed to reach it. Timing comes last, not first.