The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet

February 6, 2009 by Larry Ferlazzo | 5 Comments

I’ve been less-than-impressed with a lot of lesson plans I see out there on the web. I decided to make a short “The Best…” list of sources for consistently good lesson ideas.

The lessons at these sites are not necessarily focused on English Language Learners. Good teachers, of course, can modify decent lesson ideas.

For resources on lessons plans specifically for English Language Learners, you might want to visit these two previous lists:

The Best Books For Teaching & Learning ESL/EFL

The Best Resource Sites For ESL/EFL Teachers

In addition to offering very good lesson plans free-of-charge (though some might offer a paid “premium” service, too), in order to make it on this list the sites also had to offer ones that promote higher-order thinking. Another criteria is that they did not necessarily only have plans that required technology use or showing a particular video or DVD. The final criteria is that I have actually used a lesson plan or idea in my own class that I’ve found on the site.

I decided not to give a description of each site because they all are pretty similar in how they are set-up.

Here are my picks for The Best Places To Find Free (And Good) Lesson Plans On The Internet:

The New York Times Learning Network

The American Federation of Teachers has unveiled a new site where educators can upload lessons to share (and, of course, download them, too). It’s called Share A Lesson, and you can read more about it in the New York Times article, Teachers’ Union to Open Lesson-Sharing Web Site. Registration is certainly simple — it takes about ten seconds. It’s just beginning, so it doesn’t have a zillion resources, but I suspect it will grow quickly.

The PBS News Hour has completely redesigned their webpage providing teacher resources.

Again, feel free to offer feedback and additional suggestions.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.