CURRICULUM RESOURCES: Guide to Finding Teaching Activities and Lesson Plans
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The CECH Library provides access to teaching activities and lesson plans in various ways. Listed below are some approaches you might use once you have decided on the topic for which you want to build a lesson or unit.
Kraus Curriculum Development Library (KCDL Online)
Websites: Teacher Activities and Lesson Plans on the Web
Teacher's Editions of Textbooks
Teacher Handbook Collection (teaching activities books)
This first approach involves searching for activities books in the Teacher Handbooks (teaching activities books) section of the CECH Library using the UCLID online catalog. The CECH Library has an extensive collection of teaching activities books called teacher handbooks. These books are shelved in the Teacher Handbook section of the CECH Library and are arranged so that all books for a given curriculum area are shelved together. The areas are art, general (multiple subject areas in each book), health, pre/kindergarten (includes preschool levels from toddler through kindergarten), language arts, math, music, science, social sciences, and social studies. This collection provides access to a phenomenal number of teaching activities and lesson plans. Teacher handbooks may be checked out for three weeks and renewed twice.
This approach begins with a search in UCLID (the UC Libraries online catalog)
- From a computer go to the UC Libraries Homepage
- Next, click on “Library Catalog”
- Then click on the arrow in the “Location” area and from the pull down menu that appears, select “CECH Library ”
- Next, click in the top window of the three Word Search windows at the top of the page
- You are now ready to enter your lesson topic for locating activities, for example, “fractions” or "Civil War.”
- In the middle Search window, type the term: teacher handbook
- Then click “Search.”
You will now see a list of mainly teacher handbooks that contain teaching activities for teaching your curriculum topic.
Some topics that you teach may appear in activities books in various ways. For example, “weather” may also be called “meterology.”
So in order to find all activities books on this subject you will need to type in both terms in the top Search Window separated by “or” weather or meterology.
Other Examples:
Topic: circulatory system or heart or physiology
Topic: composition or writing
Browsing the Teacher Handbook Collection
The above searching will net many examples of teaching activities books to locate in the Teacher Handbook section of the CECH Library but because many books have activities on a variety of topics, it may be very advantageous to go to the Teacher Handbook section (books are arranged and shelved by broad curriculum area – language arts, math, science, social studies, etc.) and locate the books for the broad curriculum area in which your topic falls. Next, select various books and look in the index and table of contents for your topic. This browsing technique will net you many activities and lesson plans as well. You may even discover more activities on your topic than you found in your UCLID search.
Kraus Curriculum Development Library (KCDL)
Searching for teaching activities in the Kraus Curriculum Development Library (KCDL Online) is a second approach. KCDL is a library of thousands of curriculum guides, frameworks, courses of study, and curriculum standards. Many of these documents contain teaching activities and lesson plans. Through the online index KCDL Online, you can locate online full- text copies of newer curriculum guides as well as earlier guides located on microfiche and filed in the CECH Library.
Once in KCDL Online, in the Advanced Search mode, you can type in a keyword in the "Title/Annotation" search box or preferably scroll down to the “Primary Section” and choose a curriculum area, such as social sciences. You may also combine the above curriculum area with a “Subject.” Just click on the arrow in the “Subject” window and hold down the mouse key until you find an appropriate subject, for example, U.S. History.
Then to find teaching activities and lesson plans, click on the arrow in the “Educational Content” window and hold down the mouse key until you find Learning Activities (click on this). Also while holding down the Control Key, scroll down and click on lesson plans. You must hold down the Control Key as you click more than one selection in a window.
You can click on the appropriate grade level(s) in the “Grade Level” window.
You can click on the appropriate grade level(s) in the “Grade Level” window or possibly a state(s) in the “State” window as well. You can also select particular years by holding down the Control Key and clicking on your selections. HINT: by choosing at least 8 years, more variety and hits will be found.
If you wish to find full-text guides only, click in the box labeled “ Results with Full-Text Documents.” Most documents in the database since 2000 will be full-text.
After clicking on “ Search,” you will get a list of documents that meet your criteria. If you did not limit to full-text only, the non full-text listings will provide abstracts and the number of the microfiche. Many of these microfiche are located in the CECH Library and can be viewed and/or printed out on the microfiche reader/printer in CCM Library, Classics Library, or Langsam Library.
(Guide to Using KCDL Online to Curriculum Guides, Frameworks, and Courses of Study)
Curriculum Resource Center
Another source for accessing teaching activities is provided through the Facts on File database, Curriculum Resource Center.
For middle school, high school, and junior college teachers and students seeking material to supplement their coursework in core subject areas-including U.S. and world history, science, and geography. This electronic library of curriculum-related handouts provides access to a broad selection of visual content, including maps, science diagrams, science experiments, historical images, historical timelines, and other handouts.
websites: Teaching Activities and Lesson Plans on the Web
The Web also provides access to many teaching activities and lesson plans. The following are some typical sites and metasites providing teaching activities and lesson plans.
Jump to:
Multi-Discipline/Grade Level
Art
Dewey Decimal Classification
ESL/Bilingual
English Language Arts
Health
Learning
Math
Music
Physical Education
Science
Social Studies
World Languages
- Ohio Resource Center (ORC) (Aligned to Standards)
- Abcteach
- A to Z Teacher Stuff
- Awesome Library
- Building Healthy Lives: Clever Crazies for Kids
- CanTeach
- Connexions -
a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.
- eduTecher (Links to education technology tools on a wide array of subjects for different grade levels)
- Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators
- KB Teacher
- Learning (BBC Learning Zone)
- Lesson Plan Central
- Lesson Plan Search
- Lessonopoly
- Library in the Sky
- McREL (Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning)
- National Science Digital Library (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)*
- New York Times Daily Lesson Plan
- OER (Open Educational Resources) Commons * (Must register for free to view more than 7 learning objects.)
- ohiorc.org Ohio Resource Center for Math, Science, and Reading (Aligned to Standards)
- Schoology (School social networking and collaboration tool)
- Thinkfinity (Aligned to Standards)
- TOKTalk.net (Podcasts and blogs that use theory of knowledge approach to help students make connections and learn on a range of subjects.)
- WatchKnow (videos for students)
- WolframAlpha (Computational knowledge search engine)
- Zula World (Science, math, and astronomy - 2009 great interactive software for kids list)
- Children's Book Council
- Children's Literature - Resources for Teachers
- CyberGuides 9-12 (literature lesson plans)
- Masterpiece Theatre - PBS (literature/film lesson plans)
- Outta Ray’s Head – Lesson Plans
- Random House (Elementary/Middle Literature)
- Random House (Secondary Literature)
- Read Write Think (Lesson plans and online "student materials")
- Traci’s List of Ten (generic ideas to use in different contexts)
- Web English Teacher (numerous Language Arts Websites) (Lesson Plans, e.g. Young Adult Fiction, etc.)
- ILumina (higher level content for mathematics and science)
- Illuminations: Resources for Teaching Math (NCTM standards based site that offers lesson plans, activities, and mathematical investigations)
- Khan Academy (links to math and science tutorials, provides exceptional monitoring and motivational systems for teaching students)
- Mathwire (teacher-tested activities and worksheets for math education)
- Siemen STEM Academy (free, but must register)
- SMILE
- Geography4Kids (includes earth science material)
- Human Body
- ILumina (higher level content for mathematics and science)
- It's Elemental: The Periodic Table of Elements
- Jefferson Labs Science Games and Puzzles
- The K - 8 Aeronautics Internet Textbook Lesson Plans
- Khan Academy (links to math and science tutorials, provides exceptional monitoring and motivational systems for teaching students)
- Marine Life - Immersion (students can make videos!)
- NSTA Science 2.0 Blog - digital tools for classrooms
- The Phantom's Portrait Parlor (matter, atoms, and molecules)
- Science Applets (study simple physical systems with fun visuals)
- SeaWorld Animal Information Database
- Siemen STEM Academy (free, but must register)
- Ohio Social Studies Resource Center (OSSRC) - Aligned to standards
- Adventures of Daniel Boone
- African American History Month: Resources for Teachers (Library of Congress)
- American Memory (Library of Congress)
- pre-Civil War (New game that teaches resistance to slavery in pre-Civil War Ohio and Kentucky)
- CNN Current Events
- The History Guide (Good site for college and AP level European history content)
- History Resources for Teachers (Library of Congress)
- It All Adds Up (personal finance)
- National Archives (historical pictures)
- Remember.org (Holocaust)
- USA People Search (World War History)
- War of 1812
- White House (presidents)
Teacher’s Editions of Textbooks
A fourth approach to use in locating teaching activities is through using the teacher’s edition of textbooks for the curriculum area in which your teaching topic falls. These teacher’s editions can be found in the Textbook section of the CECH Library. CECH Library textbooks are shelved by the Dewey Decimal system. Charts are available in the Textbook section of the CECH Library that provide you with the Dewey classification number for various curriculum subjects (e.g. Algebra, U.S. History, Biology, French, etc.) so that you might readily find the area you are looking for.
Web site content: cheryl.ghosh@uc.edu, lori.choudhury@uc.edu
Revised 8/2/11
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