10 Places to Find and Share Lesson Plans Online

The following is a guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Her previous guest post, 15 Free Resources for Young Readers, was a big hit, so I'm pleased to have her with us again.

Finding and sharing lesson plans online can help teachers save time and engage students in new ways. There are several sites that have been set up specifically for this purpose. Here are ten quality lesson plans sites for teachers to try throughout the school year.

Thinkfinity - More than 55,000 lesson plans from sites like ReadWriteThink, EDSITEment, Illuminations, and Xpeditions can be located through this digital learning platform. Lesson plans can be located by subject, grade level, and keyword.

Discovery Lesson Plans Library - This lesson plan library from Discovery Education offers hundreds of original lesson plans for K-12 students. New lesson plans are featured each week.

Teachers Network - Teachers Network provides lesson plans that have been designed by teachers for teachers. Site visitors can choose from lesson plans created by new teachers or veteran teachers.

Learning to Give - Learning to Give develops free lesson plans that focus on volunteerism and civic engagement. More than 1,400 lesson plans for K-12 students are available through the Learning to Give site.

The Learning Network - The Learning Network is a special site from The New York Times that makes it easy for teachers to find lesson plans and other teaching resources directly related to recent news headlines. Specific resources on The Learning Network include a blog, a daily news quiz, a lesson plan search engine, and a student opinion section.

The Educator's Reference Desk - The Educator's Reference Desk has a large collection of more than 2,000 lesson plans written by teachers all over the country. Users can search the collection to find lessons by subject, grade level, or keyword.

Shmoop - Shmoop provides engaging study guides for literature, history, civics, and music. The site also has a special section for teachers that explains how the guides can be incorporated into daily lessons.

We the Teachers - We the Teachers (WTT) combines social networking with aspects of teachers resource sites. Educators can use WTT to create and upload lesson plans or find lesson plans created by other teachers.

Teachade - This community of educators allows teachers to contribute their own lesson plans and search for resources that have been created by other teachers. Teachade also allows users to upload files and links from existing class resources.

Tapped In - Tapped In is an online community of K-16 teachers. The site encourages educators to plan learning projects with colleagues, mentor other teachers, and share classroom resources.

Thanks, Karen, for these terrific resources! Karen Schweitzer is the About.com Guide to Business School, and she also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.