Damon Norko                                                                                              March 25, 2006

 

                                   SLM521 – Lesson Plans Activity – Elective #3

 

         Lesson Plans Online

 

Search Criteria

 

It is indeed apparent that there are many different lesson plan sites available on the web.  Narrowing it down a bit, we must first eliminate pay-sites.  Just add “/free” to “lesson plans” to diminish the hits:

 

          From 318,001 to 357 on AOL

          From 11,681,180 to 26,234 on MSN

          From 20,400,000 to 11,100,000 on Yahoo

 

Interesting disparity on those numbers!  We’ll start with the top sites on AOL, then see what we can do with the others.

 

Topics to Research

 

For sampling purposes, let’s research a few specific lessons, to be better able to compare & contrast the sites.

 

1)     Edgar Allan Poe, father of the mystery/suspense genre

2)     Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

3)     The Art of the Short Story – introductory lesson

 

Findings

 

http://www.lessonplansearch.com/

         

This site was easy to navigate, had a decent search capability, and was organized by both grade level and subject matter.  There is also a rating system for teachers to rate the lessons as they use them.  Though the site boasts 2500 lesson plans or so, I did find it limited in scope.  Still, they are high-quality and truly free, so this site is a good place to start. 

 

1)     I was able to locate a fairly decent unit on Poe almost right away.

2)     Nothing on Emily Dickinson.

3)     Some individual short stories were covered, but an overview unit was not found.

 

Last word:  There are a lot of single-works and single-writers covered here, but it is a random assortment.

 

This was all I could dig up on AOL, so I switched over to the MSN list.

 

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/

 

Here is an excellently-organized high-quality English teaching site. This was actually the 42nd site I checked out but I finally found another one to recommend.  Plans are sorted by author in the “literature/prose” category.  Truly a professional site, there are study guides, hints for interdisciplinary study and much more.  Though fully covering the classics, the site is very up-to-date on contemporary writers, such as J.K. Rowling.  AND        THEY HAD LINKS TO WEB-DROP-INS!!

 

1)     There were more Poe lesson plans than I could count; organized by background and his works.  A real “find” here for my future Poe unit.

2)     Dickinson was also no problem

3)     No short story introduction per se – but plenty of lessons that fit this category

 

Last Word:  The links on this website are also fantastic!

 

http://www.litplans.com/

 

This was a monster site I uncovered using a gateway site.  Here, everything is organized by author’s last name.  There are 30,000 listings.  It is very comprehensive, but the thing is they list everything possible associated with the author.  For instance, I checked into Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, the author of Shiloh, for I actually need a few lessons to go along with this novel my 6th graders are reading.  I found, in addition to a very useful couple of plans, everything offered on Amazon.com for her, plus a very many pay sites.  I found an offer for the curriculum guide that I am already using, for instance.  There were a couple dozen entries on Shiloh alone, and a few dozen more on Naylor herself.  Clearly a good site – limited to authors & literature but definitely useful.

 

1)     Plenty of Poe

2)     Plenty of Dickinson

3)     NA on intro to short stories

 

Last word:  Just what I like, this website contains few graphics, just a concentrated sea of blue hyperlinks to what I really need.

 

http://teachers.net/lessons

 

A different take on the issue is presented on this site.  Two separate links bring you here – one for submitting lesson plans, the other for requesting them.  What’s nice is that all sorts of esoteric topics are present – and generally written by professional-quality teachers.  There is a search engine that is easy to navigate.  There is also a section that you can browse lesson plans, and when you find one you get the link to the teachers themselves, where you conduct your exchange.

 

1)     Poe – plenty

2)     Dickinson – plenty

3)     Intro to Short Stories – several

 

Last Word:  Certainly a useful site – if you know what you are looking for.  Also, there   is a time delay involved.  Conversely, it’s nice to be able to get the plans from the real teacher involved.  Haven’t used it yet, but looking forward to trying.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/archive.html

 

The New York Times sponsors this site which is built on “The Daily Lesson Plan”, apparently a feature.  The dailies are then archived.   The plans are excellent!  The site has a very basic search engine – but really it’s more fun to just browse.  There are some very interesting items, only the “random element” makes it hard to count on this site for a specific inquiry. 

 

1)     Poe – one, using Poe as a guide to understand other writers – so it kind of fits #3, below …

2)     Dickinson – two, as part of larger units – for example, looking at American Poet Laureates

3)     Shorts -- The Poe lesson, above, plus one really good overview-type lesson

 

Last Word:  Try it, you’ll enjoy it just for the freshness of the material.  Maybe not so practical but it is very intellectual – it is the NY Times, after all!

 

http://www.lessonplanspage.com/LAJH.htm

 

I deep-linked this site to avoid some annoying pop ups – and was about to click it off, when I started scrolling down a line of literature/reading lessons that weren’t so bad.  No search engine, but organized well enough to let you scroll the categories.  Oh, well, guess the pop-ups pay the bills …

 

1)     Poe – one good one, also included in some others

2)     Dickinson – didn’t find her, but might have missed it

3)     Short stories – several

 

Last Word:  Just when you thought pop-ups were the kiss of death, there comes along a site that still delivers the goods. 

 

Conclusions

 

Navigating through all these sites was indeed a chore.  I am sure if I wanted to pay, I could access ones like http://www.lessonplanet.com/ which boasts 50,000 plans.  There’s probably a few plans in there I could use!

 

Yet I think I did quite well in finding some great sites, for free.