V. TEACHING IDEAS, LESSONS AND CURRICULUM MATERIALS
Teaching resources - various subjects
Supporting effective use of ICT in primary classrooms
NAACE is a UK organization that offers support and ideas for using ICT in primary education. Teachers can search this site from here by subject title and access reviews of books, software and other materials.
Open Learn Learning Space
The Open University (UK) offers free online courses in various subject areas through its online "Learning Space". Teachers can also download teaching materials from the "LabSpace" and share their own teaching materials.
Teaching and Learning for a Sustainable Future
This multimedia teacher education programme from UNESCO aims at reorienting education towards promoting the values required for a sustainable future. The 100-hour course prepares teachers to develop curricula that emphasise the interconnectedness of such problems as poverty, consumption, conflict and human rights.
Association of Teachers’ Websites
Free to join, this UK site offers thousands of educational resources developed by teachers for teachers, including member sites covering all curriculum areas, online and printable lesson plans, and a job database.
Blue Web'n: learning site library
This well-designed site allows teachers to search lesson plans by subject, grade or sub-category. You can also sign up for regular free emails describing new additions to the site.
Lesson Plans
Over 2,000 free lesson plans are available at this site, created by teachers for teachers. Search by lesson type, most recent additions, or try the ‘seasonal lessons’, specially devised for school holidays. Also contains a lesson plan ‘how to’.
AOL school teachers web-based curriculum resources
This page from AOL allows teachers to search for lesson plans by subject or state standard. Teachers can also share their favourite lessons and contact one another via online message boards.
Awesome library subjects
The numerous lesson plans accessible through this site will be of great value to teachers and parents alike. There are also interesting discussions of important topics, from bullying to the Middle East.
The Educator's Reference Desk
The Educator's Reference Desk brings you an array of resources, including 2,000+ lesson plans, 3,000+ links to online education information, and 200+ question archive responses. The website is divided into several areas, including General Education, Subjects, and Teaching. It also features a section about Educational Technology.
Intute
Intute is a free online service providing access to the very best web resources for education and research. All material is evaluated and selected by a network of subject specialists to create the Intute database.
McRel hot links by subject
This site links to a broad variety of material connected with lesson plans, listed by subject category, including online resource libraries and standards databases.
The eGranary Digital Library
The eGranary Digital Library provides millions of digital educational resources to institutions lacking adequate Internet access. Through a process of garnering permissions, copying Web sites, and disseminating them to networked servers inside partner institutions in developing countries, they deliver multimedia documents that can be instantly accessed by patrons over local area networks at no cost.
Teachers helping teachers
This excellent teacher resource site is updated regularly and contains a large collection of lesson plans, an interesting ‘topic of the week’ feature, and reviews of recent publications.
Wired learning: web-based lessons
Knowledge Network’s Wired Learning page offers a range of activities and projects with short- and long-term targets, as well as tools for developing original material.
Classroom resource finder (Scotland)
This website funded by the Scottish Government allows you to search links to educational web resources in number of subject areas at levels of Early years, Primary, Secondary and Special education. No subscription payment required.
Free worksheets and educational resources
This slightly confusing-looking site is nonetheless a very useful resource, bringing together a host of material for teachers of all subjects. Literally thousands of worksheets for teachers of basic literacy skills, as well as language resources, engineering, law, communications, and many, many more.
Discoveryschool.com Lesson Plans
A site with copious lesson plans, all written and used by teachers. Easy to navigate, and searchable by grade or subject. Astronomy and space, earth and life sciences and geography are all well-represented here as would be expected, but so too are all other major curricular subjects.
World Lecture Hall
Offered by the University of Texas, World Lecture Hall is an entry point to free online course materials from around the world, with links to course materials for university-level courses in 82 subject areas.
University of Queensland: Internet Resources for Schools
This site helps teachers quickly access online resources, from pre-evaluated websites by subject, lesson plans, online projects, indicators and more.
Teachernet
This United Kingdom Government-sponsored website provides online resources and lesson plans in a wide range of subject areas. Reviews of each of the lesson plans are provided, which enable teachers to assess how useful the lesson plan will be for their needs.
NoodleTools
NoodleTools website contains a set of interactive tools designed to aid students and teaching professionals with their online research. The website also features a section containing two useful resources for teachers: Debbie Abilock's award winning Web projects, 21st Century Literacies and the Curriculum Collaboration Toolkit.
TaLENT
The TaLENT website provides useful information for teachers for integrating ICT into teaching of English, Mathematics and Science. "TaLENT" was created through a partnership between three training providers: London Borough of Lewisham LEA, Goldsmiths College and Lewisham College. The model of professional development and training used is based on combined knowledge and understanding from years of experiences in supporting teachers both in their classrooms and in a wide range of professional development courses.
MERLOT
This website contains thousands of peer-reviewed online teaching and learning materials in subjects ranging from biology to history and languages. This website also offers teachers the opportunity to participate in online communities and share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues.
Other useful sites:
ICT links
There are a wealth of links on this page to lessons for many levels that integrate ICTs. There are also sites that offer support and guidance from government organizations, technological tools and teaching aids and other valuable resources. Also includes links to software tutorials.
goENC.com
On this website (UK), you can search for curriculum resources as well as online lesson plans for mathematics and science of all educational levels. However, these resources are only available to paid subscribers.
neoK12 – educational videos and lessons for K-12 school kids
A selection of video clips on various subjects (physical science, life science, human body, earth &space, social studies, health, math, English) is available on this website to make lessons more exciting and visual. There are also clips of science projects and experiments. In addition, the category named ‘Fun Videos!’ contains some interesting clips showing, for example, the process of plant growth, food decomposition and environmental changes as well as music and sports techniques. Different videos are appropriate for different age groups but so many clips are available that the website covers all levels of schooling from preschool to secondary school. The duration of the clips varies, however, all are relatively short from one minute to ten minutes.
Lesson Planet
This site offers you lessons plans in subject areas of Art and Music, Health and Nutrition, Geography, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Technology, and Social Science. In order to access to these lesson plans, subscription has to be done which cost $29.95. Or, you can get 10 days trial for free.
Education World
This website contains many useful resources for teachers including lesson plans by subjects, professional development, technology integration (e.g. templates) and some tips to make students more engaged (e.g. icebreakers).
Kids Domain
There is a huge array of downloadable shareware and software on this site, some free, others very cheap, for PCs and Macs. Click on ‘grownups’ and teachers and parents can browse by subject title, including teaching tools, or search by age group. Recommended sites are marked with a gold coin.
Federal Resources for Educational Excellence
This website, “Federal Resources for Educational Excellence” (FREE), features more than 1,500 computer-based teaching and learning resources for science, mathematics, history and language arts.
Educational software cooperative
The Educational Software Cooperative is a non-profit group offering access to software and shareware developed by members. Search this page by subject for free and low-cost educational material.
Owl and Mouse Free Educational Software
Owl and Mouse offers mostly free software that can be accessed straight from this page. Download maps, writing activities, history resources, ‘make-a-town’, or link to other sites.
A Useful tool: Assign-A-Day
This free online calendar is a convenient way for teachers to communicate regularly and immediately with their students. Teachers can post new assignments for any absentees, give a brief summary of the class content, or give notice of changes in the timetable, for example.
E-learning for kids: free courses for children globally
This website provides you with free short courses (20-30mins) on the subject areas of Science, Mathematics, Language Arts, Computer Skills, English Language and Health &Life skills developed by e-learning experts. Majority of these courses are available in French, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese as well. These courses are appropriate for children of the age of 5-12. These courses are widely used around world (80 countries).
SMART Lesson Activity Toolkit – maximising the potential of your IWB
In this site you can download the SMART Activity Toolkit software which allows you to create interactive resources for classroom use. The Tool Kit has templates for word-games, crosswords, quizzes etc. as well as flash templates which enable you to produce activities such as drag and drop, random word generator (from a vocab list), hide and reveal etc.
Learningware Reviews
This site unfortunately ceased to operate in 2002. However, the valuable articles and reviews are still accessible, and much of the software and websites still relevant.
Super Kids Educational Software Review
This great site exhaustively reviews all the new and existing educational software out there. Teachers can search these objective and critical assessments by subject, title or by price. There is a ‘best seller’ list as well as a ‘what’s new’ page.
Essential Skills classroom software
This commercial site offers early learning educational programmes which are designed by teachers, and includes packages for literacy skills such as spelling, grammar and maths.