Lesson planning prompts
Planning is slow because you start from blank every time, not because you type slowly. Four templates — the plan, a slide outline, upgrading an old plan, and post-lesson reflection — to use alongside our 30-minute workflow.
以繁體中文閱讀During a free period on Tuesday, a Secondary 3 Geography teacher stares at a blank plan template. Next week she is teaching "urban planning in Hong Kong". She types "write me a Secondary 3 Geography lesson plan", waits a minute — the starter uses New York as the example, the group task asks students to "compare the pros and cons of two cities", and nothing addresses the seven students in her class with no prior knowledge of new-town development, or her usual 40-minute double-period structure. She sighs: "Back to fixing it myself."
A planning prompt is not "write me a lesson plan". It is writing down the five things the model would ask but never does, then asking for output in steps. This is lesson 1 of module two, teaching in practice. You already know single prompts and the system layer; this lesson applies them to the work that consumes the most teacher time. The full thirty-minute workflow and timetable are in our column article AI lesson planning: a lesson plan and tiered worksheets in 30 minutes. This lesson concentrates on how the prompts are written.
Plans fail on context, not word count
The same topic "urban planning" differs between Secondary 1 and Secondary 3, between a 40-minute double and a 35-minute single, and between a class with seven students missing prior knowledge and an even one. AI will not ask "where did you get to and what is the class like?" the way a cover colleague would. It writes — and whatever is missing gets filled with the average generic version.
Five pieces of context most often left in your head but most decisive for usable output:
- Which unit and which lesson (not just the topic title)
- Learning focus listed point by point (not just the unit heading)
- What students have and have not covered
- Class profile (numbers and specific support needs, not the phrase "mixed ability")
- Period length in minutes
When she typed those five into the prompt the second time, the same topic came back aligned to her double-period structure and the new-town gap.
Get the planning prompt right and you save not typing time but the forty-five minutes of turning a generic plan back into a school-specific one.
Template 1: the plan itself
You are a planning assistant for a Hong Kong secondary Geography teacher.
Task: design a single-lesson plan.
Context: Secondary 3, unit "urban planning in Hong Kong", lesson 2 of the unit. Learning focus: (1) describe the main purposes of new-town development; (2) explain how urban planning balances housing and green space. Prior knowledge: Hong Kong population distribution, basic map reading. Not yet taught: comparing new-town case studies. Class profile: 32 students, about 7 with no prior knowledge of new towns, 2 non-Chinese speaking students needing a word bank. Period 40 minutes (one half of a double).
Output format: a five-column table — phase, minutes, teacher activity, student activity, learning focus number addressed. Two lines of key questions above the table. Below the table, three sections — (a) differentiation, listing support for the 7 without prior knowledge and for the 2 non-Chinese speakers separately; (b) three assessment questions with expected answer points; (c) two common misconceptions.
Constraints: starter no more than 15% of total time, consolidation at least 25%; every activity maps to at least one learning focus number; examples from Hong Kong; mark uncertain facts or figures "teacher to verify".
Thirty-second check: scan the learning focus column. Any activity where the number looks forced is usually filler you can cut.
Template 2: the slide outline
Do not ask AI to build the deck. Ask for the outline.
You are a teaching assistant for a Hong Kong secondary Geography teacher.
Task: write the slide outline for the lesson plan below.
Context: [paste template 1 output or a five-line summary]. Projected in class; readable from the back row.
Output format: one block per slide — slide number, title (under 8 words), content points (maximum three, each under 15 words), one line of teacher narration, and a visual suggestion describing what image or diagram belongs there. Do not generate images. Ten slides maximum.
Constraints: never put a full passage on a slide; at least one question point on every slide; keep answers in the narration line, not on the slide; mark uncertain facts "teacher to verify".
Template 3: upgrading a plan you already have
Why an old plan is the best starting point
Your old plan already carries school context — which activities survived, how time was split, which questions worked. Asking AI to upgrade beats generating from blank and stays closer to your teaching style.
You are a planning adviser for a Hong Kong [primary / secondary] [subject] teacher.
Task: review the old lesson plan below, identify improvements, and produce an upgraded version.
Context: I used this plan in [year] when the class was [description]; this year the class is [description]. Our school's major concern this year is [for example strengthening student questioning / improving support for learner diversity].
Output format: (a) five weaknesses, one sentence each with a reason; (b) the full upgraded plan in the same format as the original, with new or changed material marked "[NEW]"; (c) two sentences on how the upgrade addresses the school's major concern.
Constraints: keep activities that already work; do not change the learning focus without flagging "teacher to verify"; do not add activities needing extra equipment or extra lesson time.
Old plan:
[paste]
Template 4: post-lesson reflection
Five minutes after the lesson, while it is still fresh.
You are a reflection partner for a Hong Kong [primary / secondary] [subject] teacher.
Task: turn my post-lesson notes into a summary and propose how the next lesson should pick up.
Context: [year level], unit "[name]" lesson [n]. My notes: [three to five sentences, for example "the map activity took 18 minutes, six over", "group 3 did not speak at all", "four students still confuse new towns with satellite towns"].
Output format: (a) three points on how the lesson went, each quoting a specific observation from my notes; (b) two things the next lesson must address, with reasons; (c) a five-minute opening activity that clears up the misconception in my notes.
Constraints: reason only from the observations I supplied; do not propose remedies needing extra lesson time; when judging student performance, write "some students", never names.
Save the reflection in the panel folder. When you teach the unit again next year, paste it into template 3 and the upgrade will be far more accurate.
Where people go wrong
- Four deliverables in one sentence. "Plan, slides, worksheets and the letter home together" makes all four shallow. Four prompts, each using the last output as context. Self-check: if "and" in your prompt joins more than one deliverable, split it.
- Topic without learning focus. "Urban planning" is a topic. "Explain how housing and green space are balanced" is a focus. Self-check: delete the topic title — does the prompt still contain assessable verbs?
- Forgetting period length. A 35-minute plan and an 80-minute plan are different documents. Three words decide whether the whole thing is usable. Self-check: do the minutes in the table add up to what you stated?
- "Mixed ability" as the class profile. The model has nothing to differentiate on. Write "32 students, 7 without new-town prior knowledge, 2 non-Chinese speakers needing a word bank". Self-check: if you delete the class profile, would the output still fit your class?
Try it once
Time: 10 to 15 minutes.
What to do: Choose a lesson you are actually teaching next week. Write the full template 1 prompt with all five context pieces filled in and generate the plan. Run the thirty-second learning-focus check, and cut or revise one filler activity. Paste the revised plan into template 2 and generate a slide outline of no more than eight slides.
What to submit: The plan table (showing one activity you cut or changed) and the first three slides of the outline. In two sentences, say which activity you removed and why.
How you know it worked: Slide numbers line up with plan phases, and at least one visual suggestion is something you would genuinely go and find a diagram for — meaning the two prompts produced one lesson, not two unrelated documents.
With the plan done, tiered worksheets for the same lesson are in lesson 7.
What to take from this lesson
- Supply learning focus, prior knowledge, class profile and period length in one planning prompt, and explain which missing piece collapses usable output.
- Require every activity to be tagged with the learning focus it serves, so you can audit the plan in thirty seconds.
- Generate the plan, slide outline, upgraded old plan and reflection as four separate prompts, each using the previous output as context.
- Feed post-lesson reflection into the next round of planning instead of filing it away.
Questions that keep coming up
Treat it as a high-quality first draft, not a final script. You still adjust timings, examples and questioning for your class. If the school knowledge base holds your curriculum outline, five to ten minutes of correction after generation is usually faster than writing from blank.
The prompt never asked for the match. Add "tag every activity with the learning focus number it serves" to the output format and the model has to check itself — and you can delete filler at a glance.
The first attempt often takes an hour. By the third, if context is saved as a template and you spend time correcting rather than retyping, thirty minutes is workable. The column article sets out the timing step by step.
No. Ask for an outline — slide number, title, narration line, visual suggestion — and paste that into your slide tool. You keep control and avoid putting whole passages on the projector.