Online Lesson Plan Resources
Looking for lessons plans? Some websites have hundreds or thousands of lesson plans and most likely have a built in search feature. But for sites that don't have a search bar (or even if they do) a great way to search the site is to use the Google Toolbar. This tool will allow you to "search the web" or "search a site" (also has several extras including a pop up blocker - all free of charge) from your browser without first changing webpages to a search engine.
Searching For Lesson Plans
Ready to search for the perfect lesson plan online? Tip - use several word phrases to search a site. If you don't find the best lesson plan, narrow your search with quotation marks. This works for the entire web and even a website itself. Start with some common searches and then add or mix in words to narrow your search until you find the lesson plan you need. Here are several examples along with some "ideas" in parentheses for words to mix and match in the search phrase:
- christmas lesson plans (around the world, carol, pageant, kindergarten, math, art, primary school children, tree, night before, best, cookie, writing, ornaments, grinch, twas, story)
- cause and effect lesson plans (elementary, introducing, middle school, high school)
- penguin lesson plans (five little, unit, for first grade, polar bear)
- thanksgiving lesson plans (social studies, preschool, kindergarten, blocks, games, math, education, teacher, elementary, dealing with manners, writing, art, day, science)
- fraction lesson plans (math, computation, 3rd grade, road map, manipulative, planets, equivalent, decimals)
- winter lesson plans (solstice, language arts, holiday, safety, kindergarten, 3rd and 4th, animals in winter, dreams)
- friendship lesson plans (kindergarten, lesson plans on friendship, issues, skills, second grade)
- ocean lesson plans (shoreline, ocean resources, fifth grade, elementary, water, floor, wave, current, food chain, habitats, life, zone, art, first grade, ocean floor formations)
- preschool lesson plans (farm animals, monkeys, meat food group, circus, math readiness, colors, shapes, bugs, alphabet pages, hand washing, toys, thematic, weather, jungle animal, opposites, nutrition, transportation)
- math lesson plans (elementary, kindergarten, first grade, budget income, high school, probability, fraction, middle school, 5th grade, multicultural, special education)
- multiplication lesson plans (tables, direct instruction, fact, introduction, tests)
- solar system lesson plans (eighth grade, model, scale distances, elementary school)
- poetry lesson plans (introduction, unit, raven, symbolism, elementary, imagery, literary devices, high school)
- measurement lesson plans (customary, metric, recipes)
- spring lesson plans (second grade, spring theme, spring and first grade, k-2, writing, Spring flower lesson plans)
- summer lesson plans (summer theme, grasshopper summer lesson plans, on wheels, freedom, olympic, summer safety)
- science lesson plans (earth, elementary, family and consumer, life, physical, middle school, environmental, model atoms)
- kindergarten lesson plans (math, living and nonliving things, art, christmas, weather, black history, on money, reading, on penguins, science, autumn, frogs, poem, reading/writing, USA, animals, plants, friendship)
- art lesson plans (elementary art lesson plans, art history, high school, kindergarten, free, christmas, for kids, renaissance, multicultural, butterfly, for children, visual, middle school, snowflake, ice age, Valentine's Day, shapes)
- elementary lesson plans (science, art, math, school, decimal, teachers, physical, social studies, buffalo, germs, geometry)
- native american lesson plans (food, free, literature, grade five, art, kindergarten, legends, theme, face painting, primary, drama, sioux, culture, clothing)
- reading lesson plans (comprehension, guided, on reading inference, strategies, newspaper, fluency, difficulties, for educators, inferencing in reading, shared, expanding reading vocabulary)
- social studies lesson plans (elementary social studies lesson plans, on community, Progressive movement, on the u.s. constitution, using multiple intelligences)
- geometry lesson plans (3-dimension, activities, on identifying congruent figures, perimeter, surface area, polygons)
- grammar lesson plans (english, pronoun grammar worksheets, ESL grammar lesson plans, shakespeare, possessive nouns, common grammar errors)
Websites Offering Lesson Plans
EdHelper.com - Theme Units, Lesson Plans, WebQuests, Worksheets and Teacher Tools. A lot of tools and lesson plans for math, algebra, science, animals, health, geography, phonics, kindergarten, United States, spelling, vocabulary, reading comprehension, language arts, monthly themes, test prep, and more.
TheGateway.org - Gateway to Educational MaterialsSM (GEM) is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and provides the key to one-stop, any-stop access to high quality Internet lesson plans, curriculum units and other education resources.
Columbia Education Center - CEC Lesson Plans - These lesson plans were created by teachers for use in their own classrooms. Lesson plan topics include: Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Miscellaneous for Elementary (K-5), Intermediate (grades 6-8), and High School (9-12).
Lesson Planet - "The largest Directory of Lesson Plans on the web" allows you to search from over 30,000 lesson plans by keyword and grade.