How do I make a HTML form using and ?

How do I make a HTML form using and ?

I have made a form in HTML using a table and that worked fine, however, my
teacher told me that making forms from tables is not the proper way to do
it anymore, instead I should use:
<form>
<label></label>
<input>
</form>
but he also mentioned something about using <span></span> and I'll guess
it is just about this point where I got a bit confused, because where
should I use it - ie. should I put the <label> and the <input> in between
<span></span> ?
A few of the reason I ask is:
I don't consider myself very savvy when it comes to HTML
I would just have used a <div></div> to wrap around the <label> and the
<input> and then use css to put it where I want it to appear on the
webpage.
Regarding the form I want to create then I want it to look like this:
[Firstname] [lastname]
[textfield] [textfield]
[Street] [zip-code] [city]
[textfield] [textfield] [textfield]
[E-mail] [Phone]
[textfield] [textfield]
[message]
[textarea]
I hope the layout of my form makes sense to the majority of you !