Donna McPartland
SLM 521
Lesson Plans – Elective
#2
Online Lesson Plans – Instructional Elective
My search was for language
arts lessons for middle school students.
In the bibliography for this course one of my purposes was to find sites
with teacher resources, including lesson plans, for my middle and high school
interns. In my bibliography - which
I will share with the interns – the curricular area with the least sites
is language arts. The listing below
can be added to my original bibliography.
I hope to continue finding great lesson plans in other curricular areas
as well to add to the list.
In many of the sites visited,
the title of the lesson sounded perfect but when I opened the lesson plan and
the grade level was disclosed I discovered it was definitely
inappropriate. Even worse,
I’ve found some lesson plans that I had to read and analyze the lesson in
order to determine the grade level because it was never stated.
I would rate the
Internet4Classrooms as one of the best
sites for this lesson plan search, but I already have that site included in my
original bibliography, and since I wanted to add these to that list I
didn’t include it here.
Educators Reference
Desk – This site contains lesson plans submitted by teachers and
instructors. The lessons have been
selected using both GEM and ERIC rules and guidelines for documents. The criteria for submitting a lesson is
very specific and a template is provided for writing a lesson plan. Every lesson I opened appeared to be
well done and viable. Navigation in
this site is extremely smooth and easy.
No matter where you go in the lesson plan link, the box with the four
options: search lessons, write a lesson plan, selection criteria, and copyright
statement, is right there in front of you. In the list of lesson links, the
grade level for the lesson is displayed; you can see the level before opening
the lesson. The format is clear and
uncluttered, the text is easy to read, and you can quickly ascertain the
appropriateness of the lesson for your purpose. There are plenty of lessons from which
to choose. On the language arts
page there are 18 categories from which to choose, and in the literature
category there are 24 listings.
Date visited – 6/02/06 http://www.eduref.org
DiscoverySchool
– This site has a pull down menu for browsing by subject, grade level, or
both. The lessons are leveled K-5,
6-8, and 9-12, and since you can browse by grade level, you know the level
before opening the lesson. There
are 10 lesson plans under literature at the middle school level and most of
those are history related. This
would be very useful for providing reading in the content area. At the high school level there are more
than 40 lesson plans. The lesson plans on this site are complete and
comprehensive. The site also offers
brain boosters, teacher tools, and puzzle makers. You can even add pictures to
your puzzles. Date visited –
6/02/06 http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans
AboutEducation,
Secondary School Educators – On this site the language arts lessons,
which are authored by teachers, are divided into middle and high school
lessons. There are 34 lessons at
the middle school level and 14 at the high school level. The high school level lessons focus
mostly on creative writing. The subtopics
under the language arts heading, from which the lesson plans are linked,
include speech and debate, writing, mythology, novels and short stories. If you click on novels and short
stories, this takes you to links with really good activities to use with
specific novels. Since I had to
discover that on my own, I would say this site could be easier to
navigate. Date visited –
6/02/06
http://712educators.about.com/od/curriculumandlessonplans
Lesson Plan Z – On this site when
browsing for lesson plans by subject area, the language arts category includes
all levels K-12, but the literature category includes only elementary lessons
and activities. However, when you
get to the middle or high school level language arts page, it includes
literature lessons as well as lessons in other language arts areas. In both the middle and high school
pages, there are some very good, comprehensive lessons and some nice activities,
although navigation through the site is not as smooth as some other sites. Date visited – 6/02/06 http://www.lessonplanz.com/
Teachers. Net – This site allows you
to browse for lesson plans by levels, or you can browse by subject. There are lessons that appear to be well
done and useful, and others that look more like activities. When browsing by subject for
reading/writing, 498 lesson plans came up, and for literature 308. Although they are labeled according to
level, it is a struggle scrolling through all those links to find what you are
looking for. When browsing by
level, the subject area is indicated for each lesson, but there is no
categorization of the lessons and all subject areas are randomly placed
(possibly placed in the order they were submitted). Again it is a struggle to
find what you need. Date visited
– 6/02/06
http://www.teachers.net/