Computer Cache

Welcome Back to School

by Greg Byerly and Carolyn S. Brodie

Greg Byerly, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Carolyn S. Brodie, Ph.D., is a Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Kent State University, in Kent, OH. Phone: 330-672-2782; Fax: 330-672-7965; Email: gbyerly@kent.edu or cbrodie@kent.edu

It's time to start thinking about great new ideas for classrooms and school library media centers for the 2005-2006 school year!

In addition to the "Into the Curriculum" section in School Library Media Activities Monthly that offers new ideas every month of the school year, keep and share this updated list of online lesson plan sites. Some are general, some specific, and some are geared toward one age level or another. This column would make a great handout for every teacher mailbox in your school.

A fun site to begin the year is from Education World and features "ice breakers." The page has ideas on how to get to know your students and to help them learn more about each other. The page even links to 150 more sites with similar "ice breaker" ideas.

Above all, have a great year using these thirty sites!

Lesson Plans and Activities on the Web

  • abcteach
    This site has more than 5,000 free printable pages geared to PreK-8th grades. The site mentions that their plans are to expand more into the middle grades and high school. There are 8,300 additional pages avail-able to members who join the site for $25.00 per year or $45.00 for two years. The button at the top of the page allows the user to connect to a few free abcteach tools pages including the creation of a shape book, word wall, word unscramble, and word search. An abcteach membership adds additional features to these activities.
  • American Memory: The Learning Page
    This is the "teacher" page of the American Memory project from the Library of Congress that has digitized more than seven million items into over one hundred collections of material. The Learning Page features "teacher-created and class-room-tested lessons and is designed to help educators use the American Memory Collections to teach history and culture. It offers tips and tricks, definitions, and rationale for using primary sources, activities, discussions, lesson plans, and suggestions for using the collections in classroom curriculum."
  • ArtsEdge
    The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts supports this program as one that offers "free, standards-based teaching materials for use in and out of the classroom, as well as professional development resources, student materials, and guidelines for arts-based instruction and assessment." The site is intended to help with the integration of the arts into the curriculum and also encourages the use of technology creatively with K-12 students. Teachers are encouraged "to teach in, through, and about the arts" with the use of the interdisciplinary ideas that are presented.
  • The Big6
    Click on Lessons on the blue tab at the top of the page to link to a wide range of leveled lesson plans that use the Big6 information literacy skills model developed by Michael Eisenberg and Robert Berkowitz. Use the search box at the top right of the page and type in "banana split" to find a great web page that helps students learn the parts of the Big6 model while making a banana split.
  • Blue Web'n
    The website includes 1,957 links (as of this writing) that are categorized "by subject, grade level, and format (tools, references, lessons, hotlists, resources, tutorials, activities, projects)." There are also search and refined search boxes available where one can explore by grade level, subject area, or more specifically. The website features a unique grid at the bottom of the page that allows the user to visually pinpoint if looking for a particular subject and type of website, e. g., science lesson plans or social studies activities. New plans are added each month and users can sign up to receive the new ones by e-mail as they are added to the site.
  • Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site
    Created by a children's literature consultant, the site features numerous ideas and activities to incorporate the use of children's literature across subject areas in the elementary school curriculum. Click on Curriculum Areas at the top of the page.
  • Community Learning Network
    The site includes 5,800 links to subject, information, and activity ideas. Click on Theme Pages on the left side of the page to find over 100 listings.
  • Crayola Creativity Center
    Click on the purple crayon to get to the Lesson Plans page where there is a featured Lesson Plan of the Week. Search the lesson plan database by medium, curriculum, grade, time-frame, and/or theme. There is also a Certificate Maker. A wonderful site for elementary grades and art classes.
  • discoveryschool.com
    Find hundreds of original lesson plans, all written by teachers for teachers. Use the pull-down menus below to browse by subject/grade.
  • EDSITEment
    EDSITEment includes "The Best of the Humanities on the Web from the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with the National Trust for the Humanities, and the MarcoPolo Education Foundation." The site collects a variety of online activities and resources from "great museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and universities." A great site to browse for all grade levels. Many activities are adaptable to different grade levels.
  • Education World: Lesson Plan Center
    An incredible lesson plan site with hundreds of ideas including seasonal activities. This site is a great one to explore. A specific page features hundreds of themed ideas for holidays and special occasions.
  • Educators' Reference Desk
    These 2,000+ unique lesson plans were written by teachers from all over the United States and the world. The lesson plans also are included in GEM, which links to over 40,000 online education resources.
  • Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
    A K-12 math and science teacher center that links to hundreds of excellent content sites. Click on Lessons & Activities on the left side of the page to find sites with teaching materials that may include teaching units, activity books, and lab manuals categorized by math and science subject area.
  • GEM: Gateway to Educational Materials
    This website is "a consortium effort to provide educators with quick and easy access to thousands of educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit, and commercial Internet sites."
  • Houghton Mifflin Education Place
    A site that focuses on incorporating literature into the PreK8 classroom through a variety of curriculum areas including reading/language arts, math, science, and social studies. Additionally, there are intervention ideas and professional development activities. Accessible for teachers, students, and parents.
  • Lesson Plans Page
    A large general site with links to over 2,500 free lesson plans that can be searched by subject or topic. There is a "seasonal lesson plans" page with a direct link.
  • Lesson Planet
    A subscription site that allows member access to over 30,000 lesson plans and teacher tools. A number of levels of membership and access begin at $9.95 per year.
  • Linda's Links to Literature
    Formerly a free site through a school district, this is now available by subscription and is well worth the cost for a literature curriculum. There are "17,000+ links to literature units, lesson plans, activities, booktalks, book quizzes, puzzles, games and more… all from one location on the Web." The site has a subscription fee of $24.95 per year or $99.95 per year for a school, though there are a number of free links: authors, book awards, booklists, book reviews, children's literature links, e-books, publishers, and young adult literature links. Go directly to Teacher Tools for a collection of free tools for developing classroom materials, lesson plans, and activities.
  • McREL
    "Links to selected lesson plans and other resources that are helpful for curriculum planning, including activities developed at McREL for specific benchmarks within the Compendium (a compilation of content standards for K-12 curriculum in both searchable and browsable formats). Each subject area is organized by topic."
  • Math Forum at Drexel
    As of this writing, Math Forum featured 1,451 lesson plans that are searchable to browse by keyword, math topic, or level. An incredible array of websites related to all types of math concepts.
  • Marco Polo
    An outstanding resource site for lesson plans, activities, and high-quality Internet sites for K-12 education. The materials are standards-based. Information is organized from a variety of excellent sources. Check out the Teacher Resources section. New lesson plans are highlighted and are added to the site each Friday.
  • Microsoft: Instructional Resources: Lesson Plans
    Search for lesson plans by grade level, subject, learning area, or by Microsoft product (including Encarta lesson plans).
  • National Geographic Education
    Click the orange tab at the top of the page that says Lesson Plans and connect to a few hundred lesson plans related to geography.
  • New York Times Daily Lesson Plan Archive
    This archive contains hundreds of free lesson plans for grades 6-12. Perform a keyword search to retrieve a lesson, browse the archive by subject, or scroll down the page to view the most recently published lesson plans. This is a great website for finding connections to current events and topics of interest to society in general.
  • Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory: Library in the Sky
    A database of selected educational sites that now numbers over 1,240 searchable resources. Scroll down the right side and, under Materials, click on Lesson Plans to find 126 links for lesson plan pages.
  • PBS Teacher Source
    Includes over 3,000+ free lesson plans and activities in the categories of arts and literature, health and fitness, math, science, social studies, preK-2, and library media.
  • Physics & Astronomy Lesson Plans
    A straight list of over 200 lesson plans from K-12.
  • S.C.O.R.E. Cyberguides
    This site offers "supplementary, standards-based, Web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature. Each CyberGuide contains a student and teacher edition, standards, a task and a process by which it may be completed, teacher-selected websites, and a rubric using California Language Arts Content Standards." The ideas and activities that go with each of the children's and/or young adult books are easily adaptable to conform to standards-based education in other states.
  • Scholastic Teachers
    Click on Online Activities, Lesson Plans, or Teaching Strategies to find a wide variety of suggestions for incorporating literature into the classroom.
  • Smithsonian Education Lesson Plans
    A wonderful collection of lesson plans that can be searched by keyword, grade range, or subject. It also can be browsed by the broad themes of art and design, history and culture, or language arts.
  • teachers.net
    The site has four main purposes: "to allow our teacher-users to contribute to the content and direct site development; to utilize the Internet to harness the collective intellect and wisdom of the worldwide teaching community; to minimize costs to the greatest extent possible through automation; and to never charge teachers for using our resources." As a result, this is a good educational content site and also has a page of lesson plans that have been submitted from educators across the country.
  • USGS Learning Web: Lesson Plans
    About a dozen lesson plans/units and links to other related activity sites.