Planned against the five ELOF domains

Head Start Lesson Plan Template

The preschool weekly grid rebuilt for a Head Start or Early Head Start classroom: a reviewed-by line in the header for fidelity monitoring, an Early Learning Outcomes Framework legend so each cell can carry its ELOF goal, and the individualization, family partnership and reflection boxes grantee procedures ask for. The individual child plan covers the Early Head Start side.

The grid, and the individual plan

2 Head Start planning templates

Landscape weekly plan with a reviewed-by header field, nine activity rows with a time column, three boxes for individualization, family partnership and reflection, and a five-domain ELOF legend

Word Google Docs

Head Start Weekly Lesson Plan — Word & Google Docs

The preschool grid with an ELOF domain legend, a reviewed-by line in the header, and individualization, family partnership and reflection boxes program monitors look for.

Download Word Open in Google Docs

PDF

Head Start Weekly Lesson Plan — fillable PDF

One page, landscape. Type into the fields or print it blank and handwrite.

Download fillable PDF

Portrait individual child plan with a right-now box, a five-row table across developmental areas with focus, experiences and observation columns, and family input and next steps boxes

Word Google Docs

Individual Child Plan — Word & Google Docs

One infant or toddler, one page: what they are doing now, a five-area table of focus, experiences and observations, family input, and next steps with a review date.

Download Word Open in Google Docs

PDF

Individual Child Plan — fillable PDF

One page, portrait. Type into the fields or print it blank and handwrite.

Download fillable PDF

Specifications: US Letter, 8.5 × 11 inches. Word files are editable .docx that open in Word 2007 through Microsoft 365, including Word for Mac; the Google Docs link makes a copy in your own Drive; the PDF has real form fields and prints as plain hairline boxes when blank. Free to use in as many classes as you like, no account, no watermark.

Why it is laid out this way

About the head start templates

The Head Start Program Performance Standards do not prescribe a lesson plan form. What they require is a research-based curriculum aligned to the Early Learning Outcomes Framework, implemented with fidelity and monitored. In practice that produces three things on a weekly plan that a plain preschool grid lacks: a supervisor's review line, a visible link from each experience to an ELOF goal, and a record of how individual children were planned for. All three are on this sheet. The legend names the five domains — approaches to learning, social and emotional, language and literacy, cognition, and perceptual, motor and physical — and the hint under the grid asks for the ELOF goal or your curriculum's objective in each cell.

The ELOF is a public U.S. government work, so its domain names belong on a free template. The curriculum your program adopted is not — most grantees use Creative Curriculum® with GOLD®, some HighScope — and their objective numbers are theirs. The objective slot in each cell is blank for that reason; write your curriculum's code and the plan documents alignment without reprinting anything.

Questions teachers ask

Head Start lesson plans, answered

Is this an official Head Start form?

No. There is no official form; the standards require an aligned curriculum and fidelity monitoring, and each grantee writes its own procedure. This sheet is built to what those procedures commonly ask for — ELOF alignment per experience, individualization, family engagement, teacher reflection and supervisor review — and your education manager can tell you what else yours wants.

Where do the ELOF goal codes go?

In the cell, after the experience and before the materials — the hint line under the grid says so. Preschool goals read like P-LIT 3 or P-MATH 4; infant and toddler goals like IT-SE 2. If your curriculum maps its own objectives to the ELOF, its codes work the same way.

What should Early Head Start use?

The infant plan or toddler plan for the posted group plan, and the individual child plan on this page for each child's file. Early Head Start planning is more individual than group, and the individual sheet is where the ELOF infant-toddler goals and the family's input meet.