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 “All-Time” Best Resources, Articles & Blog Posts For Teachers Of English Language Learners
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
Learning For Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance)
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.
Teach UNICEF is an excellent resource for lesson plans and materials on social topics. I haven’t quite figured out the exact way to navigate it — it has an organized collection here, and then they have “Global Citizen Brief” like this one on Syria that appear to be elsewhere on the site.
The lesson materials are top-notch and provide versions based on grade-levels. Some of the student questions in the lesson plans themselves seem a little too UNICEF oriented, so I suspect most teachers will modify them.
Here is how the organization describes itself:
TeachUNICEF is a portfolio of global education teacher resources designed and collected by the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s Education Department for teachers, afterschool instructors, and parents. The units, lesson plans, stories, videos and multimedia cover topics ranging from the Millennium Development Goals to poverty and water and sanitation.
The great This American Life radio show has a series of lesson plans.
I learned about this next resource, The Global Oneness Project, from Valeria Brown:
The Global Oneness Project offers free multicultural stories and accompanying lesson plans for high school and college classrooms.
Reading Like A Historian is an impressive collection of almost ninety U.S. and World History lessons from The Stanford History Education Group (Editor’s Note: The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) is going through some changes.) Here’s how they describe the lessons:
The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents designed for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities.
This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues. They learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.
They look good to me. You have to register to gain access to them (though you can get a “quick view” of them without registering), but registering is a pretty painless process. The same organization also sponsors Beyond The Bubble, a history assessment site that I have previously posted about…
Newseum Unveils New Education Site
Smithsonian’s “Our Story” Is A Valuable Resource For Teachers & Parents
The Peace Corps has a nice collection of lesson plans for all subjects — they’re not about the Peace Corps, but are lesson plans they and their volunteers developed for teaching around the world.
I wouldn’t say they’re the most sophisticated ones around, but many seem to offer some interesting perspectives you won’t find elsewhere. Because of that “freshness,” I’m adding it to this list.
Speaking of the Peace Corps, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — they have published two of what I think are the best guides for teaching English Language Learners classes, and they’re both free: TEFL/TESL: Teaching English As a Foreign or Second Language and Teaching English As A Foreign Language To Large, Multi-Level Classes.
“Words Without Borders” Looks Like An Excellent New Source Of International Texts & Teaching Ideas
Wow! It Looks Like iCivics Wants To Be THE One-Stop Shop For Social Studies Teachers
The Pulitzer Center has a large selection of lessons that look quite good.
PBS’ “Above The Noise” videos are great – they always have accompanying lesson plans and transcripts, and they cover timely topics of interest to young people.
National Museum of American History has a lot of very impressive lesson plans that can be used online or in the physical classroom.
Science in the City from Stanford has equally impressive ones.
ReHistory has a couple of nice critical thinking lessons.
FINALLY, GOOGLE CREATES A CENTRAL TEACHERS’ HUB FOR ITS AMAZING “ARTS & CULTURE” SITE
CommonLit Unveils Some Pretty Nice-Looking Multi-Week English Units
The Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) seems to have a ton of excellent lesson plans and student materials for most subjects, including many accessible to ELLs. It has a pretty impressive Board of Directors, including Gloria Ladson-Billings. I’m embarrassed that I hadn’t heard of it until now.
Teaching With The News is from Brown University, and offers a regularly updated collection of very well-thought-out and complete lesson plans on current events – all for free.
New American History is a new site with lots of history resources, including a separate section sharing well thought out lesson plans.
Read Inquire Write is from The University of Michigan. They have many social studies lessons, that are also accessible to ELLs.
This next site was created by legendary musician and actor Steven Van Zandt. It’s called Teach Rock, and here’s how it’s describe on the site:
Launched by Stevie Van Zandt with the Founders Board of Bono, Jackson Browne, Martin Scorsese, and Bruce Springsteen, Teachrock.org has provided free, standards-aligned resources to help teachers, students, and families succeed for more than a decade.
TeachRock improves students’ lives by bringing the sound, stories, and science of music to all classrooms. From The Beatles to Beyoncé, from kindergarten to AP History, in the classroom or remotely, TeachRock offers meaningful lesson plans all at no cost to teachers, students, and families, inspiring deeper learning and understanding through the power of music.
Here’s a video about it:
The recently reopened National Center for Civil and Human Rights has an “education portal” which offers tons of excellent lesson plans and learning materials. You can read more about the museum at The NY Times article, As Trump Recasts History, a Civil Rights Museum Sticks to a Messy Past.
Empowering Histories is a site set-up by Matt Vriesman, the 2023 National History Teacher of the Year. Here’s how he describes it:
All my materials are organized chronologically by AP units and are tied directly to the College Board’s Key Concepts. However, these lessons work great in on-level high school and middle school history classrooms as well. All of the “supplementary materials” could easily be turned into full lessons, but I understand the pressure of trying to fit in all of the content and the writing skills required for this course, and only so much time can be devoted to each idea. Each lesson is designed not only to expose students to modern antiracist historical research, but also to facilitate their growth as analytical historical writers, therefore some of my best practices for thesis writing and document analysis (S.P.Y. Method) are sprinkled throughout. I understand that every history teacher has their own “must use” secondary sources for the curriculum and its impossible to use every good source, therefore, some of the “slides presentations” are designed for you to be able to introduce students to an important empowering or antiracist idea, even if you don’t have time in your curriculum for the full lesson.
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.
Thank you for sharing these links. I like the plans offered on New York Times, Thinkfinity and PBS Teachers. I did not know about the other sites. I bookmarked them, so I could take a closer look and perhaps find something useful for my elementary students.
Hi Larry, just clicked on the link to this page. Here’s my suggestion: TES Lesson Plans they are free and the lesson plans have been uploaded by educators : )
looking forward to learn more!
Hi Larry,
It has been a number of years since this post was published and updated. Are there any other free lesson plan sharing/repositories that you would add to this list now? Where do you believe most teachers go first to search for great lesson plans? Is there a place?
Would love your thoughts! Many thanks!
Danielle,
I am always updating all of my “Best” lists, so the original date of publication doesn’t matter. This list contains my present recommendations.
Larry
Thanks Larry – I wanted to add another resource that has free and other lesson plans for teachers since I found this post from a few years ago. I suggest adding https://daybreaklessonplans.com for any K-5 grade teachers.