We've All Been There
It's Sunday night. You've been staring at your laptop for hours, trying to finish your Daily Lesson Log for the week. Your coffee has gone cold. Your family is in the living room watching a movie without you. And you still have three more subjects to plan for.
Sound familiar?
If you're a Filipino teacher, you know that lesson planning is one of the most time-consuming parts of the job. Many teachers report spending around 3 to 4 hours on a single lesson plan when doing it manually from scratch. Multiply that by several subjects and multiple days, and your weekends practically disappear.
But here's the thing — it doesn't have to be this way. There are practical strategies you can use right now to speed up your DLL creation without sacrificing quality. Let's go through them one by one.
Strategy 1: Know the New Ilaw Format
Before you try to speed up your lesson planning, make sure you're working with the right format. DepEd introduced the Ilaw format under DepEd Order No. 009, s. 2026. It's a simplified, unified lesson plan format that replaces the older, more complex templates.
The Ilaw format is designed to be more straightforward and teacher-friendly. If you're still using an older DLL template, you might be doing more work than you need to. Switch to the Ilaw format and you'll notice the structure is cleaner and requires less filler content.
Take time to study the Ilaw format carefully. Understand what each section requires and what it doesn't. Sometimes teachers add extra information out of habit — information that the new format doesn't even ask for.
Strategy 2: Build a Template Library
One of the biggest time-wasters in lesson planning is starting from a blank page every single time. Stop doing that.
Instead, create a template library — a collection of pre-made lesson plan frameworks that you can reuse and adapt. Here's how to build one:
- Save your best lesson plans. After every week, identify the lesson plans that worked well. Save them in a folder organized by subject and quarter.
- Create skeleton templates. For each subject, create a basic template with your standard routines already filled in — your prayer, review activity, motivation techniques, and closing routines. These are the parts that rarely change.
- Organize by lesson type. Lectures, group activities, lab work, and assessments each have their own flow. Create a template for each type so you're never starting from zero.
With a good template library, creating a new lesson plan becomes more like filling in the blanks than writing from scratch.
Strategy 3: Batch-Plan by Subject
Instead of planning Monday's lessons for all subjects, then Tuesday's, then Wednesday's — try a different approach. Plan all the lessons for one subject at a time.
Why? Because when you focus on one subject, you stay in the same mental zone. You're thinking about the same content standards, the same learning competencies, and the same progression of topics. This makes it much easier and faster to plan consecutive lessons.
Here's a simple process:
- Pick one subject (e.g., Science).
- Open the curriculum guide and identify the competencies for the week.
- Plan all 5 days of Science lessons in one sitting.
- Move on to the next subject.
Teachers who batch-plan often find that they can plan a full week's lessons for one subject in the time it used to take them to plan just two or three days.
Strategy 4: Reuse Proven Lesson Structures
Not every lesson needs to be a masterpiece of creativity. In fact, consistency in lesson structure can actually help students learn better because they know what to expect.
Identify 3 to 5 lesson structures that work well for your students and rotate through them. For example:
- The Classic — Review → Motivation → Presentation → Practice → Assessment
- The Discovery — Problem Presentation → Group Exploration → Sharing → Synthesis
- The Workshop — Mini-Lesson → Guided Practice → Independent Work → Reflection
- The Flipped — Pre-reading/Video → Discussion → Application Activity
When you have go-to structures, you don't waste time figuring out the flow of your lesson. You just plug in the content and you're good to go.
Strategy 5: Collaborate with Fellow Teachers
You don't have to do this alone. Collaboration is one of the most powerful ways to cut your planning time.
If there are other teachers in your school who teach the same grade level or subject, consider dividing the work:
- Split the subjects. If there are two Grade 5 teachers, one can plan Math and Science while the other plans English and Filipino. Then swap and adapt.
- Share resources. Create a shared Google Drive or group chat where you post lesson plans, activities, and worksheets. What takes one teacher an hour to create can be shared with five others in seconds.
- Plan together during LAC sessions. Learning Action Cell sessions are perfect for collaborative planning. Instead of just discussing theory, use the time to actually create lesson plans together.
When you collaborate, everyone benefits. You get fresh ideas, different perspectives, and most importantly — less individual work.
Strategy 6: Use AI Tools (Yes, It's Officially Allowed!)
Here's the game-changer that many teachers are still hesitant about: using AI to help with lesson planning.
Under DepEd Order No. 003, s. 2026, teachers are officially allowed to use AI for creating and enhancing instructional materials. That includes lesson plans. So if you've been curious about tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or dedicated lesson planning platforms, now is the time to try them.
Here's how AI can help with your DLL:
- Generate activity ideas. Tell the AI your topic and grade level, and it can suggest engaging activities in seconds.
- Draft lesson content. AI can help you write explanations, create discussion questions, or outline a lesson's flow.
- Create assessments. Need a quick 10-item quiz? AI can generate questions aligned to your learning competency.
- Polish your writing. Grammar checkers and AI writing tools can help you clean up your lesson plan text quickly.
There are even AI-powered tools built specifically for Filipino teachers. LessonPlan PH, for example, is designed to generate DepEd-aligned lesson plans that follow the correct format — including the new Ilaw format. It's one of several options available to teachers who want to speed up their planning process.
Pro tip: AI works best when you give it specific instructions. Instead of asking "make me a lesson plan," try something like "Create a Grade 7 Science lesson plan about ecosystems using the 5E model, with a group activity and a 10-item quiz." The more specific you are, the better the output.
Strategy 7: Set a Time Limit
This might sound simple, but it works: give yourself a time limit for each lesson plan.
When you have unlimited time, you tend to overthink, over-edit, and over-polish. But when you set a timer — say, 30 minutes per lesson plan — you force yourself to focus on what's essential.
Here's a suggested time breakdown for a single lesson plan:
- 5 minutes — Review the learning competency and decide on the objective.
- 10 minutes — Plan the main activity and content delivery.
- 10 minutes — Write the assessment and any supplementary activities.
- 5 minutes — Fill in the routine parts (prayer, review, assignment).
You might not finish perfectly within 30 minutes at first, and that's okay. The point is to train yourself to plan faster over time. You'll be surprised how much quicker you get with practice.
Strategy 8: Stop Chasing Perfection
This is maybe the most important advice of all. Your lesson plan doesn't need to be perfect.
A lesson plan is a guide, not a script. It's there to help you structure your teaching, not to impress your school head with beautiful formatting. The best lesson plan is one that helps you teach well — and that can be simple.
Focus on:
- Clear learning objectives
- Engaging activities
- Meaningful assessment
That's it. Everything else is bonus. Don't let the pursuit of a "perfect" lesson plan steal hours of your life.
Putting It All Together
Let's recap the strategies that can help you make your DLL faster:
- Learn and use the new Ilaw format
- Build a template library you can reuse
- Batch-plan by subject for better focus
- Reuse proven lesson structures
- Collaborate with fellow teachers
- Use AI tools — it's officially allowed
- Set a time limit for each plan
- Stop chasing perfection
You don't have to use all eight strategies at once. Start with one or two that feel doable, and build from there. The goal is progress, not perfection.
Ready to save hours on lesson planning?
If you're tired of spending your weekends on lesson plans, you're not alone — and you don't have to keep doing it the hard way.
LessonPlan PH is an AI-powered lesson planning tool made for Filipino teachers. It generates DepEd-aligned lesson plans in the correct format, helps you brainstorm activities, and saves you hours of manual work every week.
Give it a try and take back your weekends. You became a teacher to teach, not to fill out paperwork. 😊
