Great Debates and Taylor Swift

EconEdLink is a resource that I’ve recommended to social studies teachers for many years now. In addition to great economics lesson plans like this one about lemonade stands and this one about owning your first car, EconEdLink provides professional development opportunities throughout the year. Next week EconEdLink is hosting two free webinars for teachers. The […]

Planning and Preparation Best Practices for Phys Ed

A couple of weeks ago I shared the news about the updated version of OPEN Phys Ed. Just because the site has been redesigned, that doesn’t mean your favorite older resources have gone away. As a case in point, take a look at the Tools for Planning & Preparation Best Practices page. Tools for Planning […]

The Economics of Lemonade Stands

A few weeks ago my daughters and one of their friends had a lemonade stand as part of our neighborhood-wide yard sale. The day before that I Tweeted that I had to give a little economics lesson to my kids because we had spent $15 on supplies and they wanted to charge only 25 cents […]

OPEN Phys Ed Expands With an Updated Website

OPEN Phys Ed is a resource that I’ve highlighted a bunch of times over the years. It’s the website I’d be visiting every week if I was a physical education teacher. In fact, I like it so much I wore their t-shirt in my latest video about Strava. This morning I got an email from […]

Food Science Lesson – What Makes Wings Spicy

Last week my post about the science of barbecue got some good traction on social media. To start this week I’ll continue the food science theme by sharing a PBS Learning Media lesson about the science of hot wings. Some Like It Hot is a PBS Learning Media lesson that features a Compact Science video […]

Three Fun Science Lessons to Try This Summer

As of yesterday afternoon both of my daughters are now on summer break. We have lots of plans for doing fun things this summer. We’ll be riding bikes, going fishing, visiting Story Land, and going to a couple of science museums. There will also be days when we don’t have anything planned. On those days […]

160 Free Lesson Plans on Teaching With Historic Places

I’m going to Philadelphia next week. I’m going to attend the ISTE Conference, but while I’m there I’m also going to visit a few historic landmarks that I’ve not visited in a long time. One of those landmarks is The Liberty Bell. While looking up the visiting hours for the Liberty Bell visitor center I […]

EconEdLink’s Most Popular Economics Games of the Year

Over the years I’ve referenced hundreds of EconEdLink’s resources for teachers. That’s because EconEdLink is a great resource for any teacher who needs ideas, lesson plans, games, and other resources for teaching economics lessons. On the site you’ll find resources for everything from teaching basic personal finance lessons to elementary students through resources for teaching […]

Where Is That Summer Paycheck Going?

Summer is near and for many high school students that means it’s time to start working at summer jobs. For many students the first real paycheck that they receive comes with a surprise in the form of tax withholding. PBS Learning Media has a free lesson plan through which students learn about reasons for taxes […]

Resources for Teaching and Learning About Earth Day 2023

Next Saturday is Earth Day 2023. Here’s a handful of resources to consider using if you find yourself looking for some resources to help your students understand the origins of Earth Day, its significance, or celebrating Earth Day. Discovery Education has some new resources for Earth Day 2023. These include lesson plans about sustainable living, renewable […]

Lesson Plans and Videos About Patriots’ Day and the American Revolution

As I wrote in my previous post, there are two things that I write about at this time every year. One of those is income taxes. The other is Patriots’ Day and the American Revolution. That’s what this post is about. Patriots’ Day here in Maine, in Massachusetts, and in a handful of other states […]

Good Resources for Teaching and Learning About Income Taxes

There are two things that I always write about at this time of year. One of those is Patriots’ Day and the American Revolution. The other thing is income taxes. In this post I’ll share some resources for teaching and learning about income taxes in the United States. Tax Help for High School Students A […]

40 Free Financial Literacy Lessons for High School Students

Besides being National Poetry Month April is also National Financial Capability Month. On that note, Discovery Education and Discover offer a great resource called Pathway to Financial Success in Schools. Pathway to Financial Success in Schools offers a handful of resources for middle school use, but the bulk of the material is geared toward high […]

Seven Good Activities for National Poetry Month

Over the weekend I watched two baseball games on television while the rain and wind howled outside my window. I watched because I love baseball and because it was the start of a new season. The start of the baseball season is full of hope and for all but one team ends with heartbreak. There’s […]

All About Explorers – It’s Still a Great Site

All About Explorers is a site that Russel Tarr told me about many years ago. I was recently going through my archives to remove links to sites that no longer exist when I came across All About Explorers again. I was pleased to see that it’s still going. All About Explorers developed by Gerald Aungst and […]

1759 Art Lesson Plans

The playroom in our house has lots of Crayola products in it because my daughters love to make pictures to hang on our refrigerator and cards to give to friends and family. And like most kids they don’t always remember to put their boxes of crayons and markers away. While picking up one of their […]

Physical Education Activities for Pi Day

Pi Day is just one week away (as is the start of my new course). In recent years I’ve shared some video lessons about Pi Day and some hands-on Pi Day lesson ideas. This year I’d like to highlight some physical education activities for Pi Day. OPEN Phys Ed offers five free physical education lesson […]

Lesson Plans for The State of Union Address

Tomorrow night President Biden will give the annual State of the Union Address. C-SPAN Classroom offers more than one hundred resources for teaching and learning about The State of the Union Address in historical and current contexts. If you don’t have time to review all of the resources that C-SPAN Classroom offers (honestly, who does?), […]

Tools for Teaching Adventure – A New OPEN Phys Ed Resource

OPEN Phys ED is one of my favorite websites because they offer great lesson plans and other resources for getting kids active in more than just the traditional gym class activities of years gone by. OPEN Phys Ed emphasizes providing all students with ways to feel engaged and empowered in physical education classes. OPEN Phys […]

Lesson Plan – How to Spot Fake Screenshots

In his recently published Next Vista for Learning newsletter Rushton Hurley mentioned a cool lesson plan from PBS Learning Media. That lesson plan is titled How to Spot Fake Screenshots on Social Media. It’s an important skill for all middle school and high school students who use social media to have and this lesson plan provides […]

Best of 2022 – A Calendar of SEL Activities

As I do at this time every year, I’m taking the week off to ski and play with my kids, shovel snow, and generally not think about work. I have some of the most popular posts of the year scheduled to republish this week. New posts will resume in the new year. Last month I […]

“Dad, It’s Still Autumn” – Corrections from My Daughters

Those of you who have been following my blog with regularity over the last couple of years have probably seen my informal series of posts titled Questions from My Daughters. Those posts have been about answering the questions that my daughters (now ages five and six) ask me. Questions like “what do worms eat?” and […]

Free Winter-themed Physical Education Lesson Plans

As I wrote at the start of this school year, OPEN Phys Ed is the resource that would be at the top of my bookmarks if I was a physical education teacher. One of the many things that I appreciate about OPEN Phys Ed is that there is an emphasis on lesson plans and games […]

The True Costs of Owning a Car – A Lesson Plan for High School Students

I paid $1500 for my first car. That was a hefty sum for me back in the fall of 1996. That car needed a little bit of brake work to pass the state’s safety inspection and then it needed about a dozen other little repairs over the next two years. Fortunately, I had someone in […]

Where I’d Like to Go – A Geography Lesson With Google Drawings

I originally wrote this blog post and recorded the video in 2021 while thinking about icebreaker activities for the start of the school year. The activity is also great for Geography Awareness Week. As the new school year starts many you may find yourself looking for some new ideas to break the ice and get […]

Math and Geography

Over the weekend a Tweet from Thomas Petra reminded me of a great Google Earth resource that he developed years ago. That resource is Real World Math. And though he stopped updating it a couple of years ago, there are still many Google Earth files on it that you can download to use as the […]

Halloween-themed Physical Education Lesson Plans

Halloween is less than two weeks away. I don’t know about your students and children, but mine are very excited about it! That’s why I was excited to get an email from OPEN Phys Ed earlier this week that linked to more than a dozen Halloween-themed lesson plans for physical education classes. The collection is […]

How to Catch Monsters – A Halloween Play Script

How to Catch Monsters is a free play script published by Playbooks Reader’s Theater. The play was written to be performed by students in first through third grade. The play centers around two children who are trying to catch blue, green, and purple monsters. The children do get a little help from their work-from-home dad. […]

Lesson Plans About Setting SMART Goals

Storyboard That is a great tool that can be used for creating cartoons, flowcharts, timelines, and wireframes in addition to typical storyboards. Storyboard That also offers a huge library of lesson plans on everything from classic literature to history to cyber safety. One of the newest lesson plans added to the Storyboard That library is […]

Physical Education With a Halloween Theme

Justin Cahill runs a great blog called Keeping Kids in Motion. One of the regular features of his blog is a monthly thematic challenge. Those challenges are accompanied by printable calendars and handouts for teachers. The challenges for this month are Trick or Treat, Move Your Feet, The Pumpkin Dice Latte Challenge, and The Fitness Spooktacle. Trick […]

Good Places to Find Constitution Day Lesson Plans

This coming Saturday is Constitution Day in the United States. If you find yourself in need of some lesson ideas for Constitution Day, C-SPAN, DocsTeach, and TED-Ed all offer either lesson plans or resources for building your own Constitution Day lesson plans. Constitution Day Lesson Plans from C-SPAN ClassroomC-SPAN Classroom offers free lesson plans and […]

Great Resources for Family Phys Ed Week

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I’m a big fan of OPEN Phys ED because they offer great lesson plans and other resources for getting kids active in more than just the traditional gym class activities that you and I did in school decades ago. OPEN Phys Ed seems to emphasize giving kids ways […]

Free PDFs for Lessons on Telling Time

A couple of days ago I shared a few resources for helping students learn to tell time. One of those resources that I mentioned, but didn’t demonstrate, was Canva’s templates for making clocks and their templates for making lessons about telling time. The templates can be used as is or you can modify them to […]

Read Write Think Animal Inquiry

This morning I’m taking my daughters to a little petting zoo near our home. They love to pet the goats, sheep, ponies, horses, and bunnies. Both of my daughters love learning about animals and they are both learning to write right now. Thinking about those things reminded me of a writing template hosted by Read […]

History Discussion Prompts for All 50 States

This morning I discovered a new-to-me U.S. History resource created by C-SPAN Classroom. That resource is a collection of video clips and “bell ringers” for every state in the United States. Bell Ringers are short video clips that are accompanied by discussion questions to start a lesson. In looking at C-SPAN Classroom’s collection of state […]

Rhythm Fit – New Lesson Plans from OPEN Phys Ed

Last spring I highlighted OPEN Phys Ed’s National Field Day activities and lesson plans. For the new school year OPEN has published a new collection of lesson plans, activities, and videos for K-8 students. The new collection is called Rhythm Fit. You can access all of the Rhythm Fit resources right now with a free […]

NOAA Sea to Sky – 1000+ Resources for Science Teachers

Earlier this week I was checking my local weather forecast on NOAA.gov when I noticed a back-to-school announcement. The announcement highlighted some lesson plans and multimedia resources for teaching about things like hurricanes, changing sea levels, and climate resilience. The announcement also drew attention to an updated database of resources for teachers. That database is […]

Lessons on Compound Interest, Rent, and Mittens

Last week I got an email from the Council for Economic Education. The email listed the ten most popular resources on their site. Two of them stood out to me and one of them led me to an additional resource that wasn’t included in the email. The Compound Interest Calculator is the most popular resource […]

Blackbird Provides an Innovative Way for Anyone to Teach Coding

Disclosure: Blackbird is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Around this time every year I get emails that go something like this, “Hi Richard, I have a new job this fall and I’ll be teaching coding for the first time. Do you have any resources you can share with me?” Usually these emails come from folks […]

A Great Place to Find Lesson Plan Ideas

Disclosure: TARA is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com. Earlier this week I published a lengthy piece about a new tool called TARA and how it can help you save time this fall. My favorite of all the features in TARA is the strategy resource bank that is available to any teacher who wants to use […]

A Lesson About Money for Students Getting Summer Jobs

Summer is near and for many high school students that means it is time to start working at summer jobs. For many students the first real paycheck that they receive comes with a surprise in the form of tax withholding. PBS Learning Media has a free lesson plan through which students learn about reasons for taxes being […]

The Homestead Act and a Research Prompt

Last Friday the document of the day on the Today’s Document from the National Archives blog was a copy of the Homestead Act passed on May 20, 1862. Seeing the document reminded me of a prompt that I used in a workshop about teaching search strategies that I hosted last summer. If you teach U.S. […]

Science Friday is a Must-bookmark for Science Teachers

Science Friday is a must-bookmark for teachers and students of science. As the name implies, every Friday a new batch of podcast segments about a wide range of science topics is released. Additionally, on Science Friday you will find interesting videos and articles about a wide array of topics in chemistry, biology, physics, space science, and […]

Digital Empowerment Journals for Students

A few weeks ago I shared a collection of resources for fun physical education activities. That collection featured free resources for National Field Day organized by OPEN PhysEd. OPEN is a public service funded by Varsity Brands who also offers some excellent free resources for teachers and students. One of those resources is a program called […]

A Handful of Resources for Teaching and Learning About Earth Day

This Friday is Earth Day. Here’s a handful of resources to consider using if you find yourself looking for some resources to help your students understand the origins of Earth Day, its significance, or celebrating Earth Day. CBC Kids News offers a good, concise overview of Earth Day. What I like about CBC Kids News […]

It’s Patriots’ Day! Resources for Learning About the Start of the American Revolution

Today is Patriots’ Day here in Maine, in Massachusetts, and in a handful of other states. It’s a day to mark the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. As a good New Englander and a former U.S. History teacher, every year at this time I like […]

Tract Offers Fun Ways to Wrap-up the School Year

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com At this time last year my students were starting to get antsy and I was starting to think of some fun ways to keep them excited about learning even as they were starting to get excited about the end of the school year. One of the things that […]

The Math and Science of Baseball

Tomorrow is the opening day of the 2022 Major League Baseball season. I’m excited to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees tomorrow afternoon! If you have students who are as excited as I am about the start of the baseball season, try to capitalize on that enthusiasm with one of the following educational resources. […]

A Calendar of Social Emotional Learning Activities

Disclosure: Kikori is currently an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Last month I wrote a blog post about a new app and website called Kikori that provides hundreds of free social emotional learning activities that you can do with students of all ages. One of the things that they offer to help you incorporate social emotional learning […]

A Huge Collection of Resources for Fun Phys Ed Activities

OPEN Phys Ed is an organization that hosts tons of great resources for physical education teachers. Additionally, OPEN organizes initiatives to encourage students to participate in physical education activities. One of those initiatives is National Field Day. OPEN National Field Day is an initiative that runs through May and June. It has a social media […]

Kikori App – Social Emotional Learning Activities for All Ages

Kikori App is a new mobile app and website that offers a large library of social emotional learning activities for students of all ages. The mobile app (Android and iOS) and the web versions of Kikori work the same way. On Kikori you can search for social emotional learning activities according to age, energy level, […]

Pi Day is Coming!

Pi Day (March 14th or 3.14) is next week. If you’re looking for some Pi Day activities to do or some videos to share about pi, take a look at this list of resources that I’ve compiled over the years. Numberphile has a few good videos about pi and Pi Day. Pi with real pies is a […]

A Dozen Neat NASA Resources for Students and Teachers

On Thursday I wrote about NASA’s From Hidden to Modern Figures collection of videos and lesson plans. Creating that blog post inspired me to look through my archives for some of the other neat NASA resources that I’ve found and shared over the years. Here they are in no particular order. The Langley Research Center […]

NASA From Hidden to Modern Figures

NASA’s From Hidden to Modern Figures is an excellent resource for teaching about the women who made significant contributions to the development of NASA’s space program. The site features written and video biographies of Katherine Johnson, Mary W. Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who were instrumental in many of NASA’s missions including the first orbit of […]

New Lesson Plans from DocsTeach

DocsTeach is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. The platform makes it easy to find curated collections of primary source documents and offers great templates for creating online lessons based on those documents. And if you don’t have time to make a new activity, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary […]

Try Tract to Find Inspiration for Fun Lessons

Disclosure: Tract is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Last fall I introduced many of you to Tract as a platform for Genius Hour activities, for PBL, and for remote learning. Many of you have reported that it has been great for all of those things. Now I’d like to suggest another way to think about using […]

Blackbird Code Offers Two New Self-paced Coding Lessons

Blackbird Code is one of my favorite new educational technology resources launched in 2021. For Computer Science Education Week they’ve released two new self-paced, self-directed lessons through which students can learn a bit about JavaScript. The new Blackbird Code lessons are Tether Game and Screen Saver. The two lessons teach students how to create a […]

Life on Minimum Wage – A Personal Economics Simulation Game

Almost twelve years ago I published a Google Document that outlines a personal economics simulation that I conducted in my classroom. For many years after that it was the most-requested Google Doc that I published. Then for the last few years I haven’t had any requests for it. In fact, I forgot that I had […]

Blackbird – Coding as a Conduit

Last spring I trialed a new learn-to-code platform called Blackbird. As I wrote in May, I liked it and most of my students liked it. This fall Blackbird introduced an updated user interface and a new slogan of “Coding as a Conduit.” The mission of Blackbird remains the same as before. That mission being to […]

Ten Skills Students Can Learn from Google’s Applied Digital Skills Lessons

Disclosure: this article was written as a paid partnership with Google for Education. Over the years I’ve always recommended creating your own lesson plans as much as possible. However, the reality is that sometimes we just run out of ideas and need to borrow some inspiration from others. That is why, after more than a […]

My Updated List of Halloween-themed Activities and Resources

Halloween is just a couple of weeks away. My daughters are getting excited to wear their costumes (they’re going to be Winnie the Pooh and Tigger). Their excitement reminded me that it’s time for me to publish my annual list of Halloween-themed lesson activities and resources. This year’s list includes some of my old favorites […]

Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Safety Tips Sheets, Posters, and Lesson Plans

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Stop.Think.Connect. has a large collection of posters, tip sheets, and videos that you can use to promote good online safety practices in your school or office. You can find all of them in this gallery which can be sorted according to resource type (poster, tip sheet, video, meme). The Stop.Think.Connect. tip sheets can be previewed […]

Lighthouses and Minibooks

The Library of Congress has a great collection of activities suggestions and resources for parents who are looking for educational activities they can do at home with their kids. The collection is called Resources for Family Engagement. Within this collection you will find activity kits that offer directions and ideas for making mini books at home, designing […]

Write Outside – Ideas for Writing

Thanks to one of Kevin Hodgson’s blog posts, earlier this week I learned about the National Writing Project’s Write Out 2021 campaign. This is a two week initiative beginning on Sunday, October 10th. The idea is to inspire writers through outdoor settings, particularly National Parks settings, but I think I any outdoor setting will suffice. […]

Supreme Court Lesson Plans

C-SPAN Classroom is a must-bookmark for anyone who teaches U.S. History. The large collection of free lesson plans is one of the things that keeps C-SPAN Classroom on the top of my list of go-to resources for more than a decade. And if you’re a member of C-SPAN Classroom (membership is free) you’ll get regular […]

Free Presidential Timeline Poster for Your Classroom Courtesy of C-SPAN

C-SPAN Classroom offers some fantastic resources for teachers of U.S. History, civics, and government. One of those resources that has been offered in the past and is available again this year is a free poster depicting a timeline of American presidents. The poster shows each President’s time in office, a short biography, the era of […]

Five Places to Find Dozens of Constitution Day Lessons

This Friday is Constitution Day in the United States. According to federal law all schools that receive federal funding have to teach some type of lesson about the Constitution on this day. C-SPAN, DocsTeach, and the National Constitution Center all offer either lesson plans or resources for building your own Constitution Day lesson plans. Constitution […]

These Geosciences Lessons Rock

K-5 GeoSource is a great resource produced by the American Geosciences Institute. On K-5 GeoSource you will find free lesson plans, science fair project ideas, links to virtual activities, and resources for professional development. The first time I looked at the site back in 2009 it had a distinct Web 1.0 feel. The site has improved of late to […]

World History Commons – Annotated Primary Sources for Students

World History Commons offers a free collection of more than 1700 primary sources covering a wide array of themes and events in world history. The best part is that all of the primary sources in the collection are annotated with helpful notes for students. World History Commons also offers a collection of free teaching guides […]

Blackbird Code – One of My New Favorites in 2021

I’m taking this week to recharge and get ready for the next session of the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp. For the next few days I’m going to highlight some of my favorite new and new-to-me tools so far this year. Blackbird is a new platform for teaching programming to middle school and high school […]

Four Summer Science Lessons

Summer is here in the northern hemisphere. It’s a great time to go outside and soak up some sunshine. A little vitamin D is good for everybody. This is also a time when many schools run summer enrichment programs that provide kids with some learning activities that might not otherwise happen during the school year. […]

Science Research Papers Annotated With Teaching Resources

Science in the Classroom is a free resource for teachers from Science Magazine. On Science in the Classroom you will find research papers containing interactive annotations to help students understand the content of the papers. In the right hand margin of each paper you will find a section called “learning lens.” The learning lens offers […]

A Virtual Tour of Washington With Dr. Jill Biden

Tomorrow at 1pm ET Discovery Education is hosting a free virtual field trip to Washington, D.C. for elementary school and middle school classrooms. The virtual field trip will take students to six landmarks in Washington, D.C. Along the way students will hear from Dr. Jill Biden, Yolanda King (granddaughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. ) […]

New Map-based History Lessons from DocsTeach

DocsTeach is one of my go-to resources for history teachers. I like it so much that I feature it in my Teaching History With Technology course. DocsTeach provides thousands of primary sources that teachers can use to build online and in-person history lessons for middle school and high school students. Additionally, DocsTeach hosts hundreds of pre-made […]

Blackbird Fills a Gap in Programming Instruction

Blackbird is a new platform for teaching programming to middle school and high school students. Blackbird is positioning itself as a platform that fills the gap between using a blocks-based service like Scratch and writing code in an IDE. Blackbird doesn’t use blocks or even offer any blocks. Instead, Blackbird provides a series of interactive […]

A Tour of Google Arts and Culture for Teachers

Last week Google introduced Learn With Google Arts and Culture. Learn With Google Arts and Culture is a collection of lesson plans, Street View imagery, and virtual tours based around the content found in Google Arts and Culture. Other than the collection of lesson plans, there isn’t anything in Learn With Google Arts and Culture […]

70 Lesson Plans About WWII

A few years ago I visited the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. If ever have a chance to visit, take it! I spent about five hours in the museum and I would have spent ten hours in it if I’d had the time. I wish that every student could visit the National WWII Museum, […]

My NASA Data Story Maps – Lesson Plans Based on NASA Data

A few weeks ago I published a summary of nine neat NASA resources for teachers and students. Shortly after that I received an email from someone at NASA who pointed me in the direction of My NASA Data. My NASA Data is much more than just a collection of datasets published by NASA. My NASA […]

Snoopy in Space – Lesson Plans About Space and More

From a very young age I’ve enjoyed Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all of the characters in Peanuts. Watching Charlie Brown specials and reading the Peanuts comic strip is something my uncles did, my sister and I do, and now my daughters do. That’s why I was excited to discover that the Peanuts website now offers […]

A Map Projection Game, Video, and Lesson Plans

Last week I shared a new Crash Course about geography. One of the first videos in that course tackles the question “what is a map?” Yesterday, through the Maps Mania blog, I learned about a fun quiz game that could be a good activity for students to complete after watching What is a Map? and […]

ReadWorks Adds an Offline Mode for Students

ReadWorks is a non-profit service that I’ve been recommending for years. It is a free service that provides high-quality fiction and non-fiction articles and lesson plans for K-12 ELA teachers. Every article on ReadWorks is accompanied by a Lexile score and a suggested grade level. Any article that you select will also be accompanied by […]

Fifteen New Primary Source-based Lessons from Docs Teach

DocsTeach has been one of my go-to resources for U.S. History lessons for many years. DocsTeach offers more than 1,500 primary source activities to use in elementary, middle, and high school history lessons. Additionally, DocsTeach provides tools for creating your own online lessons using primary sources from the National Archives of the United States. This […]

Dozens of Bell Ringers to Start Your Social Studies Lessons

C-SPAN Classroom has long been one of my go-to recommendations for social studies teachers. It’s particularly good for those who are developing lessons about civics and government. Bell Ringers is one of the many good resources that C-SPAN Classroom provides for free to all teachers. C-SPAN Classroom Bell Ringers are short video clips accompanied by […]

Short Lessons on the History of Veterans Day

Veterans Day is this Wednesday. If you find yourself looking for some quick lessons to review with your students tomorrow, here’s a small collection for you. ReadWorks is one of my favorite places to go when I need information texts about a holiday to share with students. ReadWorks has a good collection of Veterans Day […]

Poe, Halloween, and Phys Ed

We’re a full week into October and I haven’t shared any Halloween-themed resources. That’s unlike me. My excuse is that 2020 has been a year unlike any other. And even though we won’t be trick-o-treating or passing out candy this year, my daughters and some of my students are still excited about Halloween. On that […]

5 Digital Mapping Activities

On Monday I shared a couple of tutorials about measuring distances in Google Maps and Bing Maps. Yesterday, I shared a few resources for helping students understand map projections. This morning, I have some more tutorial videos that might help or inspire you to create digital mapping activities to use in your geography or history […]

Good Sets of Primary Source Documents About the American Revolution and More

The Massachusetts Historical Society has a great website that hosts collections of primary sources related to the American Revolution, founding families of the United States, abolition, and the Civil War. Additionally, on the MHS site you’ll find recordings of webinars about many of the topics related to the collections of primary sources. Music of the […]

USGS Offers Online and Hands-on Learning from Home Resources

Since I was in elementary school I have enjoyed looking at maps and day dreaming about the places those maps depict. I like maps so much I have a couple of USGS topographical maps on the wall in my office. So whenever the USGS emails me with something new, I immediately investigate it. The latest […]

World Wildlife Fund Livestreams, Apps, and Games for Students

For years the World Wildlife Fund has offered educational games and apps for students. Now they’re also offering live educational broadcasts for students. On the WWF’s Wild Classroom page you will find a list of upcoming livestreams and he target audience for those livestreams. For example, tomorrow’s livestream about bees is intended for students in […]

Resources for Teaching & Learning About the American Revolution

Today is Patriots’ Day here in Maine as well as Massachusetts and Connecticut. It’s a day commemorate the start of the American Revolutionary War with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. As a good New Englander, this is the day that I like to highlight some of my favorite resources for teaching and learning about […]

C-SPAN Classroom Offers New Lessons on the Economic Impact of COVID-19

C-SPAN Classroom is a free resource that anyone who teaches U.S. History or civics should have bookmarked. I’ve written about many of their great resources and programs over the years including their annual student video contest and annual summer workshops for teachers. C-SPAN Classroom recently published a new lesson plan that includes a set of […]

Two Collections of Hands-on Science Lessons Students Can Do At Home

Online lessons and virtual meetings with students and parents can be good, but at a certain point students are going to want to do more than just look at their screens and answer questions. That’s why it’s worth thinking about some hands-on activities that we can suggest students do at home alone or with the […]

The Great Thanksgiving Listen is Back!

For the fifth year in a row StoryCorps is hosting The Great Thanksgiving Listen. This annual event is an effort to get families to talk and record their stories around the Thanksgiving table. The project was originally developed to get high school students to record the stories of their parents, grandparents, and other older family […]

Find Halloween ELA Articles on ReadWorks

Last week I shared a Halloween-themed physical education lesson and instructions on how to find and modify Kahoot games about Halloween. Those of you who are looking for Halloween-themed stories to use in ELA lessons could do well to turn to this collection on ReadWorks. The bulk of the Halloween collection on ReadWorks features articles […]

A Halloween-themed Physical Education Program

In last week’s episode of The Practical Ed Tech Podcast I mentioned a great blog for physical education teachers. That blog is called Keeping Kids in Motion and it is written by Justin Cahill. One of the free resources available on his blog is Fitness is Spooktacular. Fitness is Spooktacular is a kids fitness challenge for […]

Dozens of Constitution Day Activities and Resources

Next Tuesday is Constitution Day in the United States. According to federal law all schools that receive federal funding have to teach some type of lesson about the Constitution on this day. C-SPAN, DocsTeach, and the National Constitution Center all offer either lesson plans or resources for building your own Constitution Day lesson plans. 25 […]

64 Years of Presidential Campaign Commercials – A Lesson Plan

In a little more than one year from now we’ll be casting ballots for President of the United States. That means for the next year we’ll see campaign commercials online and on television. Campaign commercials have changed a lot in the last 60+ years. That’s evident in a C-SPAN Classroom lesson plan titled Evaluating Historical […]

The Cost of Owning a Car – Free Lesson Plan

The cover image on my personal Facebook page is currently a picture of my first car. I’m pretty sure I paid $1500 for it which was a hefty sum for me back in the fall of 1996. That car needed a little bit of brake work to pass the state’s safety inspection and then needed […]

Lewis & Clark in Google Earth – And Lesson Plans for K-12

This morning while browsing through Google Earth looking for a resource about sharks for Shark Week (I found it) I came across a Google Earth voyage about Lewis and Clark. The Google Earth voyage titled Explorers: Lewis and Clark contains twelve multimedia placemarkers documenting the outbound and return journey of the Lewis and Clark expedition. […]

Three More Recommended Resources for Teaching Civics and Government

Earlier this week I published a blog post in which I shared the resources that I shared with a reader who had emailed me seeking my recommended resources for teaching civics and government. I made that list completely from memory. This afternoon I dug into my archives to find a few more recommended resources for […]

AP Government Review Resources – Kahoots and Quizlets from C-SPAN Classroom

AP exam season will be here soon. As they have done for the last five years, C-SPAN Classroom will be hosting a live Cram for the Exam session on May 4th. It’s free and open to any student who is taking the AP Government exam. That’s not the only AP Government review resource that C-SPAN […]

5 Resources for Teaching and Learning About the Science of Baseball

The Major League Baseball season started yesterday. The Yankees won, boo! The Red Sox lost, double boo! If you have students who are as excited as I am about the start of the baseball season, try to capitalize on that enthusiasm with one of the following educational resources. Exploratorium’s the Science of Baseball is a bit dated […]

Theme Poems and Shape Poems – Activities for Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month here in the United States. This is a good time to remind you or introduce you to a couple of good resources from Read Write Think about poetry. RWT’s Theme Poems interactive provides students with 32 pictures to use as the basis for writing short poems. To write a poem students […]

SFS Kids – Lessons on Listening and Composing Music

SFS Kids is the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s website for kids. It is loaded with good activities for elementary school and middle school students. On SFS Kids students can learn to compose and play music. Your students can jump into any section of SFS Kids and start learning, but it is probably best if they work through the […]

Pi Day Programming Lessons

Tynker is a service that offers programming lessons for elementary school and middle school students. I published a full overview of the service a couple of days ago. You can read that overview here. For Pi Day Tynker is offering a free lesson plan in which students practice their programming skills by making art based […]

Getting Started With the Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Learning Lab allows teachers to create and search for documents, images, videos, interactive animations, and lesson plans from a wide range of Smithsonian-hosted resources. It also lets you create collections to share with others as well as create assignments to give to your students. The video playlist embedded below teaches you how to […]

Teaching Math With Storyboards

When I’ve hosted webinars about using storyboards the vast majority of attendees expressed interest in using storyboards for in language arts or social studies lessons. That makes sense because storyboards are a natural fit in language arts and social studies classes. Storyboards can be used for math and science lessons too. In fact, Storyboard That […]

ReadWorks Now Offers Illustrated eBooks

ReadWorks, a fantastic free service for ELA teachers, recently added new illustrated ebooks to their library. These illustrated ebooks can be used in the same way that all other ReadWorks ebooks can be used by you and your students. That includes distributing ebooks to your students through a ReadWorks classroom and or through Google Classroom. […]

Building Models to Understand Brain Injury – A Hacking STEM Project

I’m still working through many of the notes that I took during the 2019 BETT Show that wrapped up in a London a couple of weeks ago. One of the new things that I saw there was a new Hacking STEM project called Building Models to Understand and Mitigate Brain Injury. This is one the […]

Two Image-based Search Challenges to Use With Your Students

One of my favorite ways to reinforce the use of good search strategies to students is to show interesting pictures and have students try to make a long list of questions about what they see. Then I let the students try to find the answers to those questions. When they get stuck, I intervene to […]

Two More Lessons in TED-Ed’s “Why Should You Read…” Series

Last fall TED-Ed started publishing a series of lessons titled “Why Should You Read…” The series features TED-Ed lessons that explain the significance of classic works of literature. When I last wrote about the series it contained seven lessons. The series is now up to nine lessons. The latest lessons are about Fahrenheit 451 and […]

Six Educational Activities That Have a Super Bowl Theme

The Super Bowl is this weekend. My prediction is that the Patriots will win. I’m guessing that my American readers have a student or two who has an interest in the game too. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. NBC’s Science of […]

Free PDF Containing 30 Pages of Illustrated Vocabulary Lessons

I get what feels like zillions of emails every day from companies that I have never heard of. 90% of them go straight to the trash bin after a three second glance. But then every once in a while I get one that is useful. Today’s random, but useful email came from a company called […]

The WWII Museum Announces D-Day Electronic Field Trip

This year is the 75th anniversary of D-Day. This spring the WWII Museum (a must-see for anyone visiting New Orleans) is hosting a virtual field trip all about D-Day. The field trip will take students to the coast of southern England and the invasion sites in Normandy, France. Live Q&A is a part of this […]

120 Free Winter-themed Reading Lesson Plans

ReadWorks is an excellent service that provides teachers with free reading lesson plans. ReadWorks offers lesson plans that can be used in classrooms from Kindergarten through 12th grade. All of the lessons are standards-aligned. And if you don’t want to use ReadWorks’ lesson plans, you can simply use any of their thousands of fiction and […]

5 Free Thanksgiving Lesson Plans You Can Use This Week

Thanksgiving is just a few days away. If you’re an elementary school teacher who has school this week, Storyboard That has five free Thanksgiving lesson plans that you can use. As you might expect, all of the Thanksgiving lesson plans that Storyboard That offers are centered around the use of storyboards and artwork. The five […]

Free PD Webinar – Article a Day With ReadWorks

ReadWorks is a free service that I have been writing about for the last few years. It offers free reading lesson plans aligned to standards for all K-12 students. Tomorrow, at 4pm Eastern Time ReadWorks is offering a free webinar on how to use their Article a Day feature in your classroom. The webinar will […]

My Party PBL – Technology and Project Based Learning

This week I am welcoming some guest bloggers. This one is from Debbie Carona. The PBL, My Party Election, originally written by Mike Kaechele, became a part of the U.S. History curriculum for 8th graders at St. John’s Episcopal School Dallas during the Presidential Election of 2016. Students worked in groups with politically like-minded teammates […]

Kids Health in the Classroom – Guides & Resources for K-12

Kids Health in the Classroom is a great place to find lesson plans, videos, and games for teaching personal health topics to students of all ages. For teachers the biggest feature of Kids Health in the Classroom is the large set of teacher’s guides containing lesson plans, activities, and worksheets available as free PDF downloads. The […]

Halloween Articles for ELA Lessons

ReadWorks is a popular service that offers a huge library of standards-aligned ELA lesson plans for K-12. You can search the ReadWorks library according to grade level and topic. Throughout the year ReadWorks publishes curated collections to align with holidays and other major events. This week ReadWorks published a collection of forty-two articles and lesson […]

Shakespeare Uncovered – Ten Free Lesson Plans

Shakespeare Uncovered is a series of videos about Shakespeare’s life and work. The series, hosted on PBS Learning Media, is organized thematically. Some of the themes are “Shakespeare and History,” “The Use of Soliloquy,” and “Gender Roles in Shakespeare.” Each of the themes is explored in the context of some of Shakespeare’s most recognizable works including […]

51 More Constitution Day Resources

Earlier this week I shared some videos and a couple of interactive resources for teaching lessons about the U.S. Constitution on Constitution Day. Constitution Day is this coming Monday and by law all schools receiving federal funds have to offer some kind of instruction on the U.S. Constitution. If you’re still looking for some resources […]

Two Interactive Copies of the Constitution for Constitution Day

Next Monday is Constitution Day in the United States. By law all schools that receive federal funds have to offer some instruction on on the Constitution. If you’re looking for some activities to do with your students on Constitution Day, consider having your students explore one of the following interactive displays of the Constitution. The […]

Take a Look at Microsoft’s Free Hands-on STEM Lesson Plans and Projects

The new school year will be here soon and I haven’t taken a break all summer. I’m taking a short break from the Internet to go fishing at one of my favorite places in the world, Kennebago Lake. I’ll be back with new posts on Saturday. While I’m gone I’ll be republishing some of the […]

23 World Languages Lesson Plans That Incorporate Comics

Storyboard That is known for its excellent storyboard creation tool that can be used for many purposes including making comic strips, creating scripts, making greeting cards, and developing timelines. Storyboard That also offers detailed lesson plans that you can use for free. The lesson plans in Storyboard That’s collection of free lesson plans are written […]

Measuring Worth – A Lesson on Inflation

Do you remember when a cup of coffee didn’t cost $3? Or when ten dollars bought you enough gasoline to drive for a week? How about buying a pack of baseball cards for 25 cents and getting a piece of gum in the pack too? I remember those days. My money seemed to go a […]

10 Good Templates for Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts Lessons

Earlier this week I published a post about Read Write Think’s theme poem online activity. Obviously, that activity is a great fit for a language arts lesson. RWT is known for language arts interactive activities and templates. Dig a little deeper into RWT and you’ll find interactive activities, apps, and templates that can be used […]

PBS Kids Summer Adventure Math Lessons

Summer is here (in the Northern Hemisphere) but that doesn’t mean that the learning has to stop. PBS Learning Media recently published set of resources designed to help you help the learning going throughout the summer. PBS Kids Summer Adventure is a set of eight online and interactive activities designed to help kids ages 4-8 […]

Theme Poem Lesson Plans and Interactive Module

Read Write Think is one of my all-time favorite resources for free language arts lesson plans and interactive activities. I’ve written about and published videos about many of RWT’s interactive tools over the years. But somehow the Theme Poems interactive has escaped my attention until now. RWT’s Theme Poems interactive provides students with 32 pictures […]

Where Is That Summer Paycheck Going? – A Lesson for High School Students

How Does the Brain Work? – A Series of NOVA Lessons

How Does the Brain Work? was a NOVA show that explored what scientists currently know about the human brain and the research that will help us to know more about the human brain in the future. One of the online supplements to How Does the Brain Work? is this interactive collection of images of brain scans. The […]

Docs Teach Adds New Primary Sources About WWI

Docs Teach is a fantastic resource for US History teachers that I have shared many times over the years. I like it so much that I include it in my Teaching History With Technology course. Docs Teach provides teachers with access tools for creating online lessons based on collections of primary source documents. Docs Teach […]

The Economics of Seinfeld – Lessons Based on Seinfeld Clips

The Economics of Seinfeld is a neat concept for teaching economics lessons developed by economics professors from Eastern Illinois University and Baker University. The Economics of Seinfeld is a catalog of clips (sometimes entire episodes) from the hit sitcom Seinfeld that demonstrate various economics concepts. There are seven pages of clips that you can browse through. Alternatively, and more practically, […]

Find the Features of Digital Vaults in DocsTeach

The U.S. National Archives used to have a great feature called the National Archives Digital Vaults. The Digital Vaults site offered great tools for teaching with primary sources from the National Archives. One of the aspects that I particularly liked was called “pathways challenges” which allowed students to see the connections between events and primary […]

By Request – Life on Minimum Wage Simulation

Last week I received a handful of requests for the Google Docs version of my Life on Minimum Wage economics game. While I no longer grant print or edit access to my public Google Docs, I do make PDFs of my documents available to download through Box.com. The purpose of Life on Minimum Wage is […]

New Science Lesson Plans from Storyboard That

Disclosure: Storyboard That is an advertiser on this blog. Storyboard That is known for its excellent storyboard creation tools. In addition to continuously developing new artwork and and new tools for storyboarding, the team at Storyboard That is always developing new lesson plans that anyone can access for free. The Storyboard That lesson plan collection […]

Three Earth Day Resources

Earth Day is coming up in a few weeks. Here are a few resources that you might consider incorporating into your Earth Day lesson plans. I’ll be sharing more resources later this week. Google offers tours in its Explore Climate Change series. The tours explore the actions of organizations to prevent or adapt to climate change in […]

Seward’s Folly Lesson Plan

Thanks to this Tweet from the Library of Congress I was reminded that today in 1867 was the day that the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. At the time it was referred to as Seward’s Folly. The discovery of gold thirty years later changed that perception. The Library of Congress offers a free lesson […]

1766 Free Lesson Plans for Art Teachers

My refrigerator is quickly getting covered with the art my toddler makes with her Crayola crayons and construction paper. Looking at one of her boxes of crayons over the weekend I was reminded of Crayola’s huge collection of lesson plans. Crayola’s lesson plan library contains 1766 free lesson plans. There are lesson plans for every […]

The Cat In That Hat Knows A Lot About That – Educational Activities Inspired By Dr. Seuss

Today is the birthday of Dr. Seuss. If he was alive he’d be turning 114. Here’s a set of fun, online activities that you could use to celebrate the work of Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That is produced by PBS Kids and features online games, videos, puzzles, and printable materials based on […]

Flowers of North America

Project Noah is a globally collaborative project to which anyone can contribute. On Project Noah you can share pictures and stories of the plants and the animals that you observe in your neighborhood. Project Noah has a section titled Missions in which you can find projects that you can contribute to. The Missions ask people to make contributions […]

If You Teach Science, You Need Science Netlinks

Science Netlinks offers dozens of lesson plans and online learning activities. The lessons and activities are cover a wide variety of science topics. All of the lesson plans are sorted by grade level, but you can also sort the lesson plans by science benchmark standards. A series of icons also indicates if each lesson plan has […]

Free Hands-on STEM Lesson Plans and Projects

“Hacking STEM” was one of the initiatives that Microsoft was heavily promoting at the BETT Show last month. I asked a few Microsoft employees what “hacking STEM” meant. They all replied with explanations that centered on the idea of providing teachers with hands-on STEM lessons and projects that can be done without having to spend […]

Code for Life – Coding Challenges and Lesson Plans

Code for Life is a free program that I learned about while attending the BETT Show last week. Code for Life has a programming interface based on Blockly. Anyone who has used Blockly or Scratch will immediately recognize the similarities when they launch Code for Life’s programming interface. Code for Life contains more than 100 […]

Polar Bear “Street” View Lesson Plans

Polar Bears International offers a set of extensive lesson plans designed to help students learn about polar bears and their habitat. One of those lesson plans is called Street View and Polar Bears. In Street View and Polar Bears students use Google Maps to explore the geography, geology, and ecosystem of the tundra around Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. […]

Geometry at Mount Rushmore – A Math Lesson

CyArk is an organization building an online library of 3D models of the world’s cultural heritage sites. Mount Rushmore is one of the places that CyArk features in their galleries of 3D models. You can find the entire collection of places here. Applications for Education In the CyArk lesson plan collection you will find a handful of lesson plans […]

Project Feeder Watch – Contribute to Tracking Bird Migrations

Project Feeder Watch is a public project administered by the Cornell Ornithology Lab and Bird Studies Canada. Project Feeder Watch collects data from backyard bird observers across the United States and Canada. Data is collected from November through April. The data collected is used for a variety of purposes including providing the public with information about the birds that […]

12 Free Lessons About Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms

Scholastic has a nice resource called StudyJams that contains short videos, slideshows, and quizzes about a variety of topics commonly taught in elementary school classrooms. Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms is one of the topics covered in a unit of twelve StudyJams. The Rocks, Minerals, and Landforms StudyJams include videos, slideshows, and short quizzes. Some of […]

The National Archives and the Yeti

The U.S. National Archives has a great feature called Today’s Document. Today’s Document features one historical document (almost always a primary source) per day. Sometimes the documents are serious while other times the documents are not so serious. Sunday’s featured document was a perfect example of a not-so-serious document. On Sunday Today’s Document was Regulations […]

The Physics of Skiing

It’s a snow day here in western Maine. For a skier like me, that means it’s time to enjoy the snow with some time on the slopes. If you live in an area that has skiing, you might have some students that feel the same way that I do about snow. New snow equals a […]

Teaching With Crossword Puzzles from Read Write Think

My grandmother taught Language Arts for decades and she loved crossword puzzles. I know that many other teachers still like to use them in one way or another too. If you would like to create your own crossword puzzles for your students or you want them to create crossword puzzles, take a look at Read Write […]

A Fun Game About Ecosystems

Feed the Dingo is a fun game that teaches students about the importance of maintaining balanced ecosystems. In the game students have to build and maintain a desert ecosystem. The game begins with a blank slate to which students have to add plants and animals. The game plays out over twelve virtual days. Each day […]

Lesson Plans for SMART Goal Setting

Cooking In a Solar Oven – A Hands-on Science Project

Update June 2022: This resource is no longer available. I have been watching a lot of Top Chef re-runs on Hulu lately. In one of the episodes that I watched last week all of the chefs had to cook with a solar oven or a solar stove. Watching that episode reminded me of the solar […]

Good Resources for Constitution Day Lessons

Constitution Day in the United States is just nine days away. By law, public schools are required to include a Constitution lesson during the day. Here are some resources that you might find useful in creating a Constitution Day lesson plan for your students. Keith Hughes, the face of Hip Hughes History, has a long playlist of […]

Hack the News With Mozilla’s X-ray Goggles

Mozilla offers some great tools that can help students understand how webpages are created. Thimble is one of those tools that I have featured in the past. It offers many great activities for students to complete to learn how to build webpages including webpages with animations. X-ray Goggles is another great tool that Mozilla makes […]

Solar System and Storyboards – Free Lesson Plans

Disclosure: Storyboard That is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com Storyboard That offers a robust platform on which students and teachers can create comics and storyboards. Even those who don’t fancy themselves as artists can make great comics by utilizing Storyboard That’s galleries of thousands of pre-made characters, scenes, and objects. In addition to offering a great […]

Be Internet Awesome – Google’s New Internet Safety Curriculum

Be Internet Awesome is Google’s new Internet safety curriculum. I learned about it from Larry Ferlazzo and then spent some time exploring it myself. The Be Internet Awesome site features a game called Interland. The game is set in a virtual world that students navigate by correctly answering questions about Internet safety. The graphics of […]

5 Good Resources for National Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month. Whether you’re trying to help students understand and interpret the meaning of poems or you’re trying to help them write their own poems, the following five resources are worth exploring. (By the way, I always wonder who gets to declare the something is “national X month?” That might be a good, […]

Simple, Effective Search Challenge Lessons

How to Use the Hexagon Learning Template from ClassTools

On Friday I wrote a post that featured links to blog posts about using hexagonal learning in elementary school and high school classrooms. That post also featured the ClassTools hexagons generator. That tool lets you create online and offline hexagonal learning activities for your students. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use […]

Articles and Lessons About Weather – From ReadWorks

ReadWorks is a great service that provides lesson plans designed around nonfiction and fiction articles. All of the articles provided by ReadWorks are labeled with a suggested grade level and a Lexile score. The ReadWorks Digital classroom service provides teachers with a free way to distribute assignments and monitor students’ progress. Learn more about ReadWorks […]

Three Super Bowl Themed Educational Activities

The Super Bowl is this coming Sunday (I predict that the Patriots will win). The odds are good that you have some students who are also interested in the game. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. NBC’s Science of Football is a series […]

WriteReader Presents the Most Popular Topics Amongst Student Authors

WriteReader is a great multimedia writing tool for elementary school students and their teachers. On WriteReader students can create multimedia ebooks independently or with the assistance of their teachers. Teachers can log-in and see what their students have written. Teachers can make suggestions and corrections to what their students have written in WriteReader. Teachers’ suggestions […]

Would You Rather? – Quick Math Challenges

Would You Rather? is a website maintained by John Stevens for the purpose of sharing quick and fun math challenges for students. Would You Rather? presents a picture with a mathematics problem that asks “would you rather?” Most of the questions have a financial aspect to them. One of my favorite examples is this challenge that asks […]

Storyboard That Offers Lesson Plans for Every Month

Creating a storyboard can be a good way to outline a story, to illustrate your own ideas, or to analyze problems. Storyboard That offers dozens of lesson plans for topics in language arts and history. You will find lesson plans developed around famous literary works like The Outsiders and The Red Badge of Courage. You […]

Classroom Deliberations – Lesson Plans on Current Issues in U.S. Politics

C-SPAN Classroom Deliberations is a good resource for teachers of U.S. history or civics. On the site you will find 34 lesson plans centered around issues currently debated in Congress and in U.S. political discourse in general. A few of the latest lesson plans deal with Electoral College reform, third party candidate participation in Presidential […]

Student Videos Celebrating Service – Cool Projects

This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley, the founder of Next Vista for Learning. Teachers have a love-hate relationship with cool projects. They often find the extra time one requires a burden, but love seeing what the students do when given room to see that they’re capable of taking their talents to another level. […]

Quick Lessons About the Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is today in the northern hemisphere. Should you need some short explanations of solstices to share with your children or students, take a look at the following resources. On National Geographic’s Education page you will find this hands-on activity designed to help students understand the changes in intensity and duration of sunlight on their […]

One Image Inspires a Lesson

This is a guest post from Rushton Hurley. Rushton is the founder of Next Vista for Learning, a great place to find and share educational videos. Imagine starting class without saying anything. The students look at you, awaiting something. You wait long enough to catch their attention, and then project this image in front of […]

Media Literacy & Fake News – A Lesson Plan

C-SPAN Classroom has a new lesson plan that is quite timely given all of the recent stories about fake news stories created and shared through social media. Media Literacy & Fake News is a free lesson plan that is based on five C-SPAN videos featuring authors and other experts talking about the role of media […]

Storyboard That Offers 5 Thanksgiving Lesson Plans

American Thanksgiving is just a couple of weeks away. Many of us are looking for Thanksgiving-related lesson ideas. If you’re looking for some elementary school lesson plans about Thanksgiving, Storyboard That has some ideas for you. On the Storyboard That teacher guide site you’ll find five Thanksgiving lesson plans. As you would expect, all of the lesson plans […]

The National Archives’ Today’s Document Offers Good Lesson Ideas

The US National Archives is a great resource for history teachers to keep in their books. I’ve written about some of their services in the past (here and here) and today I’d like to remind you of the National Archives Today’s Document feed. On a daily basis Today’s Document features a new image or document from the United […]

CS First – Lesson Plans for Teaching Computer Science

CS First is an initiative from Google to promote computer science classes and clubs in schools. CS First features computer science lesson plans based on nine themes. Within each theme you will find up to ten hours of activities to conduct with your students. The themes in CS First are storytelling, friends, fashion & design, […]

Harvest of History – The History of Farming in North America

Harvest of History is a website produced by the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York (also the site of the Baseball Hall of Fame). Harvest of History is designed to help students and teachers explore the origins and development of modern farming practices. The basis for Harvest of History is to explore the question, “where […]

ClassDojo Launches a New Series of Videos About Empathy

Earlier this year ClassDojo launched a new video series that they called Big Ideas. The first videos in the series were all about growth mindset. The videos proved to be extremely popular as they were all viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Next week ClassDojo is releasing some new videos in their Big Ideas series. […]

27 Ideas for Teaching With & About Topographic Maps

The USGS offers free topographic maps for most of the United States. The maps can be downloaded as PDFs through the USGS store. The maps can be used in the 27 suggested topographic maps lessons found in the USGS education site. All of the lessons are rated by grade level and time required for completing […]

Quill Adds 50 New Passages to Their Free Interactive Writing Lessons

Quill is a free service that puts a new spin on the old writing worksheets that most of us used in middle school. Essentially, Quill provides lesson activities based on written passages about people, places, things, and events. Each passage contains errors that students have to correct while they are reading. Quill recently added 50 new […]

How to Use the Lesson Plan Add-on In Google Docs

Update June 2020: OpenEd was acquired by ACT and is no longer online. This add-on no longer exists. Last month OpenEd released a new Google Docs Add-on that makes it easy to search for and organize lesson plan materials from their humongous library of resources. With the Lesson Plan Tool for Google Docs installed you […]

PBS Election Central Offers Debate Kits for Classrooms

Earlier this year PBS launched a new version of Election Central. That website is dedicated to helping teachers help students understand the process of choosing the next President of the United States. Join the Debates is one of the features of Election Central that teachers should find useful as we head into the last couple […]

PBS LearningMedia Introduces New Curriculum-based iBooks

PBS LearningMedia has released a new series of iBooks for K-8 teachers. The series promises to provide teachers with iBooks on topics in math, English language arts, social studies, and Spanish language and culture. Each iBook will include lesson plans, videos, games, and other activities aligned to NCSS, ACTFL, and Common Core standards. Two iBooks […]

ReadWorks Offers a Nice Set of Poems and Guiding Questions for Poetry Month

ReadWorks is one of my favorite nonprofit services for teachers. ReadWorks offers hundreds of lesson plans and thousands of non-fiction and fiction passages aligned to Common Core standards. Additionally, each article is listed with a Lexile score and suggested grade level. ReadWorks recently released a new set of poems and guided reading questions. The collection […]

16 Educational Resources for Earth Day 2016

Earth Day 2016 is on Friday. As I’ve done in the past, I’ve compiled a list of resources for teaching about Earth Day and environmental science in general. As was featured yesterday, Discovery Education offers a nice set of resources for teaching about the world’s coral reefs and biodiversity of the oceans. Expedition Earth Day is a […]

Expedition Earth Day – An Exploration of Coral Reefs

Next Friday is Earth Day 2016. Discovery Education has a great Earth Day resource for you to use with your elementary and middle school students. Expedition Earth Day is a free set of resources for teaching students about the world’s coral reefs. A 30 minute is the central aspect around which the lessons are designed. […]

Mozilla Releases an Interactive Web Literacy Map

I was recently contacted by the Mozilla Foundation with news about their recently released interactive guide to teaching web literacy. Mozilla’s interactive web literacy map is based on three main components of web literacy; reading, writing, and participating. Each of those elements is linked to smaller, supporting components. Clicking on any component of Mozilla’s interactive […]

10 Apps, Sites, and Lessons for Promoting Health and Fitness

In all of my Best of the Web presentations I try to present resources for a wide variety of classroom settings and subject areas. Health and physical education resources are always included because of my personal interest in the field as well as its importance in giving students lifelong skills. Here are ten of my […]

Two Educational Activities to Capitalize on Super Bowl Enthusiasm

I’m currently watching the Super Bowl and thinking about students who will be talking about it when they see their friends at school tomorrow. Try one of the following resources to turn your students’ enthusiasm for the Super Bowl into a fun lesson. NBC’s Science of Football is a series of ten videos from NBC Learn […]

Tag: free lesson plans