New Lesson Plan Ideas for All Teachers
The turning of the calendar from July to August always flips a mental switch that says to me, “it’s time to start thinking about new things to try this fall.”
Jumping into a webinar or attending a conference can provide you with some new lesson plan ideas. A good ol’ Google search can help. But I also like to look at resource and strategy banks for new-to-me ideas to try when in the new school year. On that note, here are some good places to look for new-to-you lesson plan ideas to try in the new school year.
OER Commons has been one of my go-to resources for new-to-me lesson plan ideas for more than a decade. On OER Commons you will find thousands of lessons organized by content area, material type, grade level, and standard. Here’s a short overview of how to conduct a basic search and an advanced search on OER Commons.
TARA Teachers is a new company that provides an online organizer for teachers. One component of TARA Teachers is a strategy resource bank that you can use to find new strategies and templates for teaching a wide range of topics. Here’s a brief video demo of using the strategy resource bank on TARA Teachers. (Disclosure: TARA is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com).
The CK-12 Foundation is probably best known for its Flexbooks initiative. Within the Flexbooks you’ll find lesson plans for teaching everything from a third grade lesson about forces to geometry lessons to digital photography instruction.
I’ve long said that if I were ever to go back and get a different certification, I’d pursue a physical education certification. That probably explains why I appreciate the work of OPEN (Open Physical Education Network). OPEN offers lots of free physical education lesson plans for all grade levels.
50 Ideas for Short Workshops
50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook that I created with busy tech coaches, tech integrators, and media specialists in mind. In it you’ll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis of your own short PD sessions. Get a copy today!