Career Readiness · Productivity · Lesson Plan

Planning and Organizing

A free lesson plan introducing the principles of planning and organizing — how to break a major objective into measurable goals, set precise dates and amounts, prioritize, and maintain momentum. Useful throughout life, both personally and at work. Free to read and reproduce.

HS Business Ed · Adult Ed · College
Lesson + Exercise Worksheet
60 min
Free Lesson

What Students Learn

Learning objectives

Why planning and organizing skills matter throughout life — both personally and at work
How to identify a major objective and research the steps needed to reach it
How to break a complex end result into manageable goals, each one a meaningful step
Why setting precise goals with dates, times, and amounts is essential — achievement has to be measurable
How to establish priorities so attention goes to the most important goals first
Why goals over which you have control reduce the risk of failing to achieve them

For Teachers

How to use this lesson

Method: Introduce the topic by explaining that planning and organizational skills are important in our personal and working lives. Have students read the comprehension passage. Give them the worksheet and ask them to complete their own plan on similar lines to the model.

Debrief: ask students to share some of their objectives and plans with the group. The quietest insight comes from comparing how different students approached the same kind of objective — the variation in chunk size, timeline, and resource estimate is the lesson on its own.

Pairs well with the Project Management lesson as a workplace-productivity sequence. Best taught in high-school business education through adult education, when students have real objectives (graduation, savings, career goals) they can practice planning on.

Free Lesson