In my first teaching job I was given a teacher's edition of the textbook my students would have and a list of various things I should cover. There was no curriculum, it was up to me to find my own way. Because of this, I immediately turned to the internet to find some help. I was disappointed to find page after page of elementary and middle school level lesson plans and nothing for high school.
Eventually, I found some great sources. I'm going to share them with you so you don't have to spend so much time looking for the good places. Goodness knows we don't need to waste any time as teachers!
- Read, Write, Think is a great resource for English teachers or others looking for ways to improve literacy in the classroom. There are lessons on specific periods - like the Harlem Renaissance, or a lesson on describing an important teacher in your life. I rarely used entire lessons from Read, Write, Think but I frequently was able to use them as a guideline and jumping off point to personalize lessons for my own classroom. These lessons are all provided by the National Council of Teachers of English. The site also has a fantastic section full of student resources, including pre-writing activities, web quests and online games and quizzes.
- The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has lesson plans created at its summer teachers institute. These lessons, mainly focusing on Language Arts and Social Studies, incorporate music and are always a big hit.
- The Discovery Channel's Discovery Education has lesson plans covering everything from Ancient History to Forensics.
- Princeton Online has a wide range of art lesson plans available for teachers.
- The Educator's Reference Desk is a good resource for math and science lessons as well as other topics.
- The New York Times website has full-text lesson plans for a variety of topics. The plans coordinate with Times articles for students to read and contain questions to answer and activities. I have often used these for substitute teacher lesson plans as well, because there are so many topics available and they're relatively easy to follow even if I'm not in school for a day.
If you have a favorite online resource, please share it in the comments. It is always good to have more tools in our teaching toolbox to get those lessons planned.
Photo Credit: Fuschia Foot on flickr
