Scheme of work generator
LessonSmith is a scheme of work generator for teachers. Enter your term dates once, pick a subject and class level, and it drafts the term lesson by lesson, with your mid-term break and exam weeks marked in the weeks they fall.
The scheme saves to your library. Export it to Word to change any row, or to PDF to print it. It drafts for 11 curricula and uses your curriculum's own name for the document: a scheme of learning in Ghana, an annual teaching plan under CAPS in South Africa.
What does a scheme of work include?
A scheme of work is the plan for a whole term: what each lesson teaches, in which week, and how you will check that learners got it. LessonSmith drafts it as a table with one row per lesson.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Week and lesson | The teaching week, counted from your term start date, and the lesson number within that week. |
| Strand and sub-strand | Where the lesson sits in the curriculum. Other curricula use their own words for these, such as theme and topic in Nigeria, or unit and topic in England. |
| Specific learning outcomes | What learners should be able to do by the end of the lesson. |
| Learning experiences | What learners do during the lesson. |
| Key inquiry questions | The questions the lesson is built around. |
| Learning resources | Textbooks, materials and equipment the lesson needs. |
| Assessment methods | How you will check the learning, such as oral questions, a written exercise or observation. |
| Reflections | Left blank for you to fill in after you have taught the lesson. |
How does it fit the scheme to my term?
It reads the term calendar you set up once in the app. The number of weeks comes from your term start and end dates, and each week gets one lesson for every day you teach, up to five. Your mid-term break, exam weeks and any special dates you added appear as rows of their own in the weeks they fall, so the week numbers match the term you are teaching.
Do I need the curriculum document?
You need one of two things: the curriculum PDF for your subject and level, or a few notes on what the term covers. With the PDF, the draft follows the document. With notes alone, it drafts from what you wrote, and you should check every row against the official curriculum design before you use it.
The generator reads the first 20,000 characters of a PDF. Upload the pages for your subject and level rather than the whole curriculum, or the part you need may be cut off.
Can it plan the whole year?
Yes. Choose a single term or the full year. A full year is drafted one term at a time into one document, and each term counts as one scheme of work against your plan's allowance, so a three-term year uses three.
The Kenyan curriculum has a page of its own, CBC schemes of work. For a single lesson rather than a term, use the lesson plan generator.
Questions
Is there a free scheme of work generator?
Yes. LessonSmith's demo is free and needs no account and no card. It includes 3 schemes of work, 100 lesson plans and 10 support plans, once, and nothing is topped up after that. Work made in the demo does not move to an account you create later.
Which curricula does it support?
Eleven: CBC/CBE (Kenya), NERDC (Nigeria), CAPS (South Africa), the standards-based curriculum (Ghana), the National Curriculum (England), Common Core and NGSS (United States), CBSE and NCERT (India), the Australian Curriculum, FGOS/FOP (Russia), the International Baccalaureate, and Cambridge International.
Can I rename the columns to match my school's form?
Yes. Open Settings, then Document format, then Schemes of work. You can rename any column and choose the typeface, text size and heading style, and the Word and PDF exports use the same settings.
Is a LessonSmith scheme of work official?
No. LessonSmith is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or certified by any ministry, examination board or curriculum authority. It gives you a draft to check and correct before you hand it in.