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Your first lesson

Create a lesson on the calendar, add a lesson plan, attach materials and mark it as prepared — or open a lesson that GapFiller generated from your timetable.

3 min readUpdated July 30, 2026

By the end of this guide you'll know how to create a lesson, write a lesson plan, and mark it as prepared.

Before you start

Make sure you've finished onboarding. You need at least one school, subject and class.

If you created a timetable during onboarding, GapFiller may already have generated lessons on your calendar. You can open one of those and skip straight to Add a lesson plan.

Create a lesson on the calendar

  1. 1

    Open the Calendar

    From the sidebar, open the Calendar. You'll see your week (or day / month, depending on your view).

  2. 2

    Click the + button

    Tap the + button in the bottom-right corner. Choose New Lesson.

    Click + in the bottom-right corner, then choose New Lesson

    You can also click an empty time slot on the calendar, then switch the type to Lesson.

  3. 3

    Fill in the lesson details

    In Create New Lesson, complete the required fields:

    • Lesson Title
    • School
    • Subject
    • Grade (your class)
    • Date, Start Time and End Time
    Fill in the lesson title, school, subject, class, date and times

    Click Create Lesson.

If a matching timetable exists for that school, subject, class and date, GapFiller may ask whether to link the lesson to the timetable. Linking keeps your calendar in sync with your weekly schedule.

Add a lesson plan

Creating the lesson only places it on the calendar. To prepare what you'll teach, open the lesson and use the Details tab.

  1. 1

    Open the lesson

    Click the lesson on your calendar. The lesson panel opens with tabs for Details, Homework, Materials, Todos and Curriculum.

  2. 2

    Write your plan

    In Details, type your lesson plan in the editor. You can start from a template such as Lesson Plan or Lesson Plan Detailed if that helps.

    Open the lesson and write your plan in the Details tab
  3. 3

    Attach materials (optional)

    Switch to the Materials tab and click Add Material to upload a file or add a link. You can also connect Google Drive or OneDrive later from the getting started checklist.

Mark the lesson as prepared

When you're ready to teach, toggle the lesson from Needs Prep to Prepared.

Mark the lesson as Prepared when you're ready to teach

Preparation tracking only appears if Show preparation tracking is turned on in your profile preferences. If you don't see the toggle, check your settings.

Your home dashboard shows how many of today's lessons you've prepared, so you can see your progress at a glance.

Prefer automatic lessons?

If you'd rather not create lessons one by one, set up a timetable with weekly slots. GapFiller generates the lessons for the whole date range. You can do this during onboarding or later from your entities. Then open each lesson to add the plan and materials.

What's next?

Related guides

Create, edit and delete lessons

Add a lesson to your calendar, open it to edit the plan and schedule, mark it as prepared, and delete it when you no longer need it.

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The onboarding walkthrough

Set up GapFiller step by step: add your schools, subjects and classes, then create a timetable so lessons appear on your calendar automatically.

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