ESL Lesson Plan Template for One-to-One Tutors

An ESL lesson plan template is a one-page grid with a goal, a level and five or six timed stages that you fill in before each lesson. The version below is built for a 60-minute one-to-one lesson: warm-up, main input, practice, production, wrap-up and homework. Copy it, fill it in (two finished examples follow, at A2 and B2), and cut it down to 30 or 45 minutes with the timing table further on.

If you want the thinking behind the stages, such as PPP and task-based learning, read lesson planning for online tutors. This post skips the theory and gives you the page to write on.

What does an ESL lesson plan template need?

A useful template is a short checklist of decisions, because a plan you can't fill in within ten minutes won't survive a busy week. Every English lesson needs the same few answers: what the student can do by the end, who the student is, how the lesson starts, what new language comes in, how the student practices it, where the student uses it freely, and what happens after the lesson.

Notice what is missing: scripts, slide decks and long lists of teaching points. One goal and a handful of activities with minutes beside them is enough. The level matters because the same topic is a different lesson at A2 than at B2. The Common European Framework (CEFR) is a six-point scale from A1 for beginners up to C2 for learners who have mastered the language, according to Cambridge English, so naming the level on your plan keeps your input and your expectations matched.

The blank 60-minute template

This template is a table of stages with a time budget, because writing the minutes down is what stops one stage from eating the whole lesson. Copy the whole table into a document, a note or a page in your classroom and fill in the last column.

Part	Minutes	Ask yourself
Goal	Before class	What can the student do by the end that they could not do at the start? One sentence, starting with "can".
Level	Before class	A2, B1, B2 or C1? What does this student already control at that level?
Warm-up	8	What gets the student talking about their own life, and gives you a first read on today's mood?
Main input	12	What is the one new chunk of language (a grammar point, a phrase set or a short text) and how will you show it?
Practice	15	What controlled tasks let the student use the new language correctly before they use it freely?
Production	17	What realistic task makes the student use the new language to get something done?
Wrap-up	5	What two or three things will the student say back to you to prove they can use them?
Homework	3	What can the student do alone in 10 to 15 minutes that repeats today's language?

The minutes add up to 60. The input stage is short on purpose: students learn more from using language than from hearing you explain it, so most of the hour sits in practice and production.

Two small habits make the template work. First, write the goal last if you are stuck. Plan the production task first (what will the student do in the second half?), then write the goal as a sentence that describes it. Second, keep the plan visible during the lesson. A plan in a drawer does nothing.

Example 1: A2, ordering food

A2 ordering food is a good first example because the goal is small and the finish line is obvious: the student orders a meal and gets what they asked for. This is an example plan, not a ready-made course, so change the dishes and the setting to fit your student.

Part	Minutes	Plan
Goal	Before class	The student can order a meal and ask one question about the menu.
Level	Before class	A2. Knows food words and "I like". Says "I want a coffee" and needs to learn "I'd like".
Warm-up	8	"What did you eat yesterday?" Show three photos of dishes and ask which one the student would choose and why.
Main input	12	Show a short café menu and a six-line dialogue. Highlight four chunks: "Can I have...?", "I'd like...", "What's in the...?", "Is that all?" Say each aloud; the student repeats.
Practice	15	Match each chunk to a situation. Complete a gap-fill dialogue. Read the dialogue aloud twice, swapping roles.
Production	17	Role-play: the tutor is the waiter, the student orders lunch and asks about one dish. Play it twice. The second time, swap roles, so the student also practices "Is that all?"
Wrap-up	5	Student says the three most useful phrases from memory. Fix two errors from the role-play, for example "I want a coffee" becomes "I'd like a coffee".
Homework	3	Record a 30-second voice message ordering a meal for a friend.

The role-play drove every other choice. The warm-up gets the student thinking about food. The input gives them exactly the chunks the role-play needs. The practice stage lets them say those chunks correctly before the pressure starts.

Example 2: B2, business meetings

B2 business meetings is a good second example because the language is about tone, not new vocabulary: a B2 student already has the words, but sounds blunt. Again, this is an illustrative example plan.

Part	Minutes	Plan
Goal	Before class	The student can disagree politely and ask for clarification in a ten-minute team meeting.
Level	Before class	B2. Fluent enough to be understood, but direct to the point of sounding rude ("That won't work").
Warm-up	8	"Describe the best and worst meeting you have been in." Note any meeting language the student already uses.
Main input	12	A one-page phrase bank in four groups: disagreeing ("I see where you're coming from, but..."), clarifying ("Could you clarify what you mean by...?"), redirecting ("Can we come back to...?"), summarizing ("To sum up...").
Practice	15	Sort twelve phrases into the four groups. Rewrite five blunt sentences into diplomatic ones: "That won't work" becomes "I'm not sure that will work for us."
Production	17	A simulated meeting with a three-item agenda. You play a manager who pushes back on the student's proposal. Run it for about ten minutes, then repeat the hardest item.
Wrap-up	5	Replay your notes: two moments that went well, two sentences to say better. The student rephrases the two.
Homework	3	Write an 80-word follow-up email summarizing what the meeting decided.

The same skeleton carries a very different lesson. The only things that changed are the topic, the chunks and the task. The stages and the minutes stayed put. That is the point of a template.

How do you shorten the template to 30 or 45 minutes?

Shortening a lesson plan means trimming each stage in proportion, because cutting a whole stage leaves a hole in the sequence. If you drop practice, your student goes from hearing a phrase to using it in a role-play with no safety net. Use these minutes instead.

Part	30 minutes	45 minutes	60 minutes
Warm-up	3	5	8
Main input	6	9	12
Practice	8	11	15
Production	9	14	17
Wrap-up	3	4	5
Homework	1	2	3

At 30 minutes, shrink the content, not just the clock. Teach two chunks instead of four. For the A2 plan that means "I'd like..." and "Can I have...?" only, and a single run of the role-play. For the B2 plan, pick one function (disagreeing) and leave the other three for next time. At 45 minutes, keep all the stages and trim the amount in each. Pick one practice task instead of three, and one round of production instead of two.

For a warm-up that fits in three minutes, see warm-ups for one-to-one online lessons.

How can one plan serve several students?

One plan serves several students because only some parts of it belong to the student. The stages, the timings and the type of task stay the same; the topic, the chunks and the personal details change. Split every plan into three layers:

The skeleton. The stages and the minutes. This never changes.
The swappable content. The topic, the phrase bank, the role cards and the practice sentences. These change per level and per goal.
The personal layer. The warm-up question and the homework. These change for every student, and they take about two minutes to rewrite.

Here is an example. Say you teach three A2 students: a nurse, a student who is about to travel to Canada, and a retiree who eats out with friends. The ordering-food plan works for all three. The nurse gets a hospital canteen as the setting and "What's in the soup?" as the extra question. The traveler orders in a diner. The retiree orders for a table of four. The skeleton, the chunks and the practice tasks are the same. You are changing the setting and one warm-up question, which is five minutes of work.

To make this work in practice, keep one file per plan and name it by level and function, for example "A2 ordering food" or "B2 disagreeing politely". When a plan works, save it. When a plan fails, write one line on what to change before you put it back. After a few weeks you will plan from your own library, not from a blank page.

What does the same plan look like in Tuton?

A lesson plan in Tuton is a short list of steps that you build yourself before class or in the room, and it follows the same shape as the template. Each step is one card. Only you see the plan; your student sees whatever you put on screen.

You open the plan with Plan in the classroom, or on the Plan tab of the lesson in Lessons. Then click Add a step. A step can be a library lesson, a game, a document, a page, a Space board, a video or a conversation. Click the minutes on a step to set how long it takes, and drag the steps into order. Here is how the A2 plan maps onto them:

Template part	A step in the plan
Warm-up	Conversation step: "What did you eat yesterday?"
Main input	Page step: the menu and the four chunks
Practice	Page step with the gap-fill, or a game from the library
Production	Space board step: the café scene, set up for the role-play
Wrap-up	Conversation step, with your notes
Homework	Set after the lesson, from the lesson's Homework tab

Click a step to start it, and your student's screen follows: a page or document opens on the stage, and a Space board opens the Space. A page or document step shows Shared or Private, so you can prepare a page and keep it hidden until you want your student to see it. A video step lets you paste a YouTube link and play it for both of you.

The reuse part is built in too. In the Space, Save board saves a whole board, and Save to reuse in a page's tab menu saves a single page. Both appear under Saved in Resources. In the next lesson, click Add a step, then Saved, and pick the board or page. Each student gets their own fresh copy, so changes in one lesson never touch another. If you didn't finish everything, Copy from last lesson on the Plan tab brings over the steps you left. For more on the room itself, see the Tuton classroom.

None of this is required to use the template. A plain document works. The advantage is that the plan, the materials and the classroom sit in the same place.

Frequently asked questions

How long should an ESL lesson plan be?

One page, and ideally half of one. A goal, a level and six timed stages is enough for a one-to-one lesson. If your plan takes more than ten minutes to write, it has too much detail in it.

What are the main parts of an ESL lesson plan?

The main parts are a goal, a warm-up, an input stage, controlled practice, free production, a wrap-up and homework. The names change between schools, but the order does not: students hear the language, use it in a controlled way, and then use it freely.