Monday, April 26, 2010

Lesson Planet Search engine for Teachers

Lesson Planet – The Search Engine for Teachers

http://www.lessonplanet.com/

As part of the TOS Homeschool Crew I was given access to an interesting site called Lesson Planet.

Lesson Planet makes it easy for teachers and parents to search over 225,000 online lesson plans and worksheets that have been reviewed and rated by teachers. The site says that you can search over 150,000 teacher reviewed lesson plans and 75,000 worksheets. You can search by lesson plans (subject, calendar, theme), worksheets (subject, theme), and standards by states. You will also be able to access lesson planning articles.

To select a specific grade you will have to use the search functionality. However the grades are listed when you select a specific subject. For example, in the science and technology there is a subject about space. Since I have just received a telescope I decided to check this section out. From there, I can have access to a multitude of lesson plans concerning space – astronauts, astronomy, black holes, comets and meteors, constellations, galaxies, Hubble telescope, moon, planets, solar system, stars and universe. Already listed in there are a bunch of lessons with the grade range and the rating. So I pick SPACE for grade 1-4 and the rating is quite high 4 stars out of 5. These lessons cover survival in space and you will have a list of equipment that you might need as well as the procedure to follow to complete the activities.

Lesson Planet has put together a small video explaining how you can use Lessonplanet.com to help you in your homeschool. Simply click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpSGoBJWyiY to watch it. Also available on the site is a curriculum calendar that highlights the special days throughout the year. I like to use this kind of calendar just to populate my facebook daily announcement. I’ve been doing this since over almost two years now and my friends appreciate it. It is an educational alternative to other sort of comments that I would prefer not to read.

Keep in mind that Lesson Planet is not a christian website. Consequently, you will have access to information about other religions as well as science lessons based on evolution. It is your responsibility to prepare your lesson before doing it. This way you will know what is taught before hand and can make necessary adjustment to adapt it to your family.

This site is interesting to say the least if you don’t have organization and don’t want to search by yourself over the net. But honestly I don’t see myself as a homeschooler to pay for such a service when you have Google search or a tool like the homeschool bar you can install on your PC.

For examples see the lesson plans or the worksheets.

Lesson Planet has a 10 day free trial to allow teachers and parents to try the site with no obligation. After the free trial, membership is only $39.95/year.

This review was possible because I received free access to Lesson Planet for a period of time through TOS Homeschool Crew.

No comments:

Post a Comment