Last reviewed: 25 October 2026
Under the Competency-Based Curriculum, good planning is what separates a lesson where learners sit and copy notes from one where they actually build skills. Schemes of work and lesson plans are also among the documents head teachers and quality assurance officers ask to see. This guide shows teachers how to write both from the official curriculum designs.
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Start from the curriculum design
The curriculum designs published by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) are the source for every scheme of work. For each learning area and grade they set out strands, sub-strands, specific learning outcomes, suggested learning experiences, key inquiry questions, core competencies, values, pertinent and contemporary issues, and suggested assessment. Always plan from the current design for your grade rather than from an old scheme copied from someone else.
Writing a scheme of work
A scheme of work spreads the curriculum across the term week by week. A common layout uses these columns:
- Week and lesson number
- Strand and sub-strand
- Specific learning outcomes
- Key inquiry question(s)
- Learning experiences (what learners will do)
- Learning resources
- Assessment methods
- Reflection or remarks
Count the actual teaching weeks in the term first, leaving room for assessments, half-term break and school events. Our term dates page helps you count weeks. Then divide the sub-strands sensibly, giving more time to the heavier ones.
Writing a lesson plan
A CBC lesson plan turns one row of the scheme into a single lesson. A practical structure is:
- Details: school, grade, learning area, date, time and number of learners.
- Strand and sub-strand.
- Specific learning outcomes, written so you can see whether learners achieved them, for example “By the end of the lesson, the learner should be able to measure the length of objects in centimetres.”
- Key inquiry question that will drive the lesson.
- Learning resources: real objects, charts, digital devices, the environment.
- Organisation of learning: introduction, lesson development in steps, and conclusion.
- Extended activity for home or the community, where appropriate.
- Reflection on what worked and what to change.
Make learners active
The heart of CBC is learners doing things: discussing, experimenting, measuring, building, role-playing, going outside. In your lesson development steps, write what learners will do, not only what you will say. A useful test is to ask: if a visitor walked in at minute 20, would they see learners working?
Plan the assessment with the lesson
Decide before the lesson how you will know learners achieved the outcome: oral questions, observation, a short written task, a checklist or a rubric. Record the results, because they feed school-based assessment and report cards. Our guide to formative assessment in CBC gives practical techniques, and school-based assessment explained covers how SBA counts.
Save time without cutting corners
- Plan as a department so teachers of the same grade share the load.
- Keep a bank of resources and activities per sub-strand to reuse each year.
- Write reflections honestly; they make next year’s planning much faster.
- Store schemes and plans digitally so they are not lost when a teacher leaves.
Schools that want planning, marks and report cards in one place can look at CBC report card and SBA tools, including Anademy Report Cards, which turn the marks you record into parent-ready reports.
A final tip
A lesson plan is a tool, not a performance. Keep it short enough to use while you teach. For more teacher support, visit our teacher resources section.
Common planning mistakes
The most common problems quality assurance officers find are outcomes copied word for word without being adapted to the class, learning experiences that are really just teacher talk, missing assessment plans and reflections left blank for weeks. Fixing these four things makes planning documents both more useful to you and more convincing to anyone who reviews them.