Regardless of your subject or teaching style, planning effective lessons can transform your students' learning process. Whether you teach first graders or high school seniors, keeping your students interested is key. Here are six tips for planning successful lessons that will engage and excite your students. 1. Create learning goals and a pointed strategy: Focus your lesson planning around two or three clear learning objectives. Articulate these goals in a sentence that all of your students can understand, such as, "Today, we'll learn about the impact of the French Revolution," or, "We'll find out what polynomials are, and how they work." Outline skills and concepts your kids can reasonably master in the allotted time frame. 2. Draft instructional notes: Draft notes for yourself, outlining how you'll conduct each learning activity and the materials you'll need for each. You may need to write an introduction or a mini-lecture to prepare your students for a particular dilemma or concept. To reduce distractions, create fluid transitions between activities. 3. Plan your presentation: Your classroom technique is a live presentation of textbook material. Unless you need to review a key passage, formula, word or technique in detail, avoid merely reciting a lesson verbatim; students generally won't respond to this and will become quickly bored. Plan activities that allow students to actively absorb and process material and demonstrate their understanding. You can use the text as a supplement to your lesson, not the other way around. 4. Diversify your learning activities: Tailor each activity within a lesson to convey a specific learning goal, varying the activities of each class. In planning class lessons, integrate computer labs, games, hands-on activities and outdoor demonstrations. Consult with lesson planning resources for inspiration or design activities that you know will suit your students' learning preferences. Your students may respond better to working through problems in groups, rather than individually. Break up lessons by planning sections that can be done individually and those that can be done in groups. And don't be afraid to try new things. Your students aren't the only ones who are learning. 5. Be flexible: The best teachers have backup plans. Students' interest can be fickle, or they may grasp a concept in half the time you've allocated to a topic. If you're not prepared with a new activity that can further illustrate concepts, you may lose their attention. 6. Assess your students' knowledge: At the end of a lesson, ask students to demonstrate what they've learned, whether through a pop quiz, personal reflection essay or a quick Q&A session. Although this is the last step in the process, stay engaged! You need to make sure that all of the planning you've done has been effective.