Lesson planning is the process of creating a teachers detailed description of the course of instruction or "learning trajectory" for a lesson. It is a teachers guide for facilitating a lesson, which typically includes the goal of what students need to learn, how the goal will be achieved, and a way to measure how well the goal was reached. A well-developed lesson plan reflects the interests and needs of students and incorporates best practices for the educational field. Lesson planning is a thinking process, not the filling in of a lesson plan template. It is a comprehensive chart of classroom teaching-learning activities, an elastic but systematic approach for the teaching of concepts, skills, and attitudes. Creating a reliable lesson plan is an important part of classroom management, and it requires the ability to incorporate effective strategies into the classroom, the students, and overall environment. Effective lesson planning contributes to successful learning outcomes for students in several ways, such as helping students and teachers understand the goals of an instructional module, allowing the teacher to translate the curriculum into learning activities, aligning the instructional materials with the assessment, and assuring that the needed instructional materials are available.