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How are schools using our lesson planning and teaching resources?

See how teachers and schools are making the most of our resources

We've designed our lesson planning and teaching resources specifically for the classroom so they can be used flexibly to complement your existing curriculum, in whichever way suits you best.

Teachers have been sharing ways they’ve been supporting their pupils and staff with Oak’s resources.

Using Oak for lesson planning

Lesson planning and teaching resources

From our homepage you can search our thousands of resources which have been designed to be easily adapted by you to use in your classroom. 

You can search by keyword or topic or start exploring our subjects by picking a key stage to look through.

Each lesson is made up of similar items such as quizzes, videos and worksheets and video transcripts. Many of our resources can be downloaded, edited and adapted to suit your needs.

See our help article: How do I use your teaching resources to plan and teach great lessons.

Why not get started now with our lesson planning page. You can learn more about our resources and how to use them to support your lesson planning.

Our curriculum plans

To support your planning, our fully sequenced curriculum plans for each subject provide inspiration and a springboard for annual, termly and weekly planning for every teacher in your school.

We have provided curriculum rationale, topic outlines and information on pre-existing knowledge needed. There is a suggest sequenced order of lessons if that works for you but we expect teachers to add to, take away and adapt what they need to suit them.

Explore our interactive curriculum plans

With our interactive curriculum plans you can:

  • See an explainer of each curriculum, so you can understand the thinking, structure and focus behind the plan to inspire your own approach
  • View the full sequence and lessons we'll release teaching resources for later this academic year
  • See the unit descriptions with a 'why this, why now' to help you consider the sequence of your current planning
  • Download the plan to use offline to help with your planning.

For more information see our subject curriculum help articles.

Using Oak for lesson cover

Oak is the ace up your sleeve when it comes to setting cover. Our thousands of resources are there to take the pressure off, especially when there’s a requirement for a colleague or supply teacher to cover a subject or key stage that isn’t a specialism. 

Add teacher notes and share

Sharing teaching resources with your colleagues is quick and easy with our teacher notes and share function. You can share our lesson resources with your own personalised comments, in one place. 

Position of Add teacher note and share button on a lesson page.

Click 'Add teacher note and share' on a lesson page to and add a note that will be displayed when the copied link is opened.

For example, you could add:

  • Instructions for the lesson to send to a cover teacher.
  • Tips for your colleagues who are planning similar lessons.
  • Lesson reflections for those supporting your development.

As Donna Lewis, head of Broken Cross Primary in Macclesfield says:

“I’m increasingly aware that I could well end up in a position where it’s a class teacher who is out of school, and that’s when Oak will really come into its own again. I did some cover myself during lockdown and used the Oak resources to teach number work to Reception.”

Using Oak for homework and revision

Teacher workloads are stretched far enough without spending hours creating topical homework, revision booklets and after-school sessions from scratch. For building skills and knowledge outside of the classroom, explore and share our lessons with your classes. 

Share activities with pupils

Position of Share activities with pupils button on a lesson page

Want to share lesson activities such as quizzes and worksheets with your pupils? Click on the 'Share activities with pupils' button on a lesson page and choose:

  • 'Copy link' to share directly with colleagues or with your classes
  • 'Google Classroom' or 'Microsoft Teams' to post lesson resources directly to your VLE
  • 'Email' to open up an email to send directly from your email account.

You can easily customise the lesson resources, choosing to share them in their entirety or part of a lesson ensuring the learning is personalised and relevant. Pupils can then complete the activities in class or at home.

Using Oak to support absent pupils 

There are many reasons a pupil may be absent from lessons or from school. Our ready-made resources mean you only have to plan your lessons once, no matter where your pupils are learning. Download resources for your in-class teaching, whilst sending the same lesson to any pupil at home via Google Classroom, Teams or any other platforms.

To help you quickly understand progress, pupils can share their quiz results with you including a breakdown of results.

Tracking work

To help assess pupils progress, your class can share their results back with you once they have completed a lesson. This means you can track pupils’ progress even if they’re completing it independently. 

How it works:

  • Pupils complete a lesson in our pupil area. 
  • The quizzes are automatically marked and pupils are shown a final score. 
  • Pupils can then share results via a link or print them out.
  • Teachers are able to see a breakdown of the pupil's answers by question, attempts made, the final score, whether they downloaded the worksheet and how much of the video they watched.

Seeing lesson results is a good starting point to show how pupils are progressing and to identify areas where they may need further support. 

See our help article: Using our pupil area.

Using Oak for CPD

We've heard from schools that they are using the lessons in staff training as an alternative observation resource or helping new teachers see examples of how other teachers teach a particular topic.