Teachers are constantly juggling instructional demands, diverse student needs and limited planning time. Trusted, free curriculum resources give teachers access to adaptable lessons, assessments and instructional strategies that reflect best practices.
This blog post aims to highlight some of the best online lesson plan websites for teachers that can significantly support instructional prep time while ensuring effectiveness and quality.
Why Teachers Need High-Quality Free Lesson Plans
Creating quality lessons that meet the needs of every student requires thoughtful planning. Accessing free teacher planning tools online fills gaps and shortens prep time by providing customizable instructional materials, downloadable lesson plans, teaching strategies and curriculum support. Online teacher resources are not only budget-friendly, but they also offer ready-to-use, and sometimes printable, lesson plans that can be adapted rather than created from scratch.
It would be a great disservice not to acknowledge the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in lesson planning, too. AI tools can help teachers generate ideas, differentiate activities, create assessments and offer structured feedback.
Top Free Lesson Plan Resources for Teachers
Teachers Pay Teachers
Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is a vast online marketplace and resource library offering ready-to-use lesson plans and engaging instructional materials for pre-K-12 settings. While some resources require purchase, a large portion of the site’s content is free and easily accessible. The platform offers a wide variety of content tailored to specific grade levels and instructional needs, with helpful filters that streamline searching by subject and resource type.
Materials are created by practicing educators, which often makes them practical and classroom-ready. However, user-generated content can affect quality, so teachers may need to spend extra time reviewing and selecting the most effective resources.
ReadWriteThink
ReadWriteThink provides free, high-quality ELA resources. Their educational tools, such as K-12 lesson plans, classroom activities, printables, and interactive resources are all focused on reading and language arts instruction.
It’s provided by the National Council of Teachers of English, with each lesson plan aligned to the International Reading Association Standards, as well as state and Common Core standards. This helps teachers ensure instruction meets literacy benchmarks.
Smithsonian Learning Lab
The Smithsonian Learning Lab is a free, interactive online platform developed by the Smithsonian Institute that provides access to a vast collection of authentic digital museum resources. The experience is enhanced by the “create” option, which allows educators to curate collections of resources and customize them to engage their students.
Teachers can utilize the Smithsonian Learning Lab to incorporate primary sources and multimedia into lessons. It’s not a marketplace or repository of teacher-created resources. Rather, it’s an online platform that provides free primary sources and digital collections.
PBS LearningMedia
PBS LearningMedia is a standards-aligned resource library created by PBS and other local public television stations. Within this vast digital resource library, teachers can access videos, interactive media, lesson plans and support materials across various subject areas, with a particular focus on science, STEM, social studies and literacy.
You can filter content by grade level (pre-K-12) and topic, integrate media into instruction, and build lessons using the Lesson Builder tool. Printable resources such as activity sheets, discussion guides, and classroom posters support hands-on and blended learning.
Google for Education
If you are a parent or teacher working with K-12 students, then chances are, you are familiar with Google Classroom, one of the components of the integrated suite of tools within Google for Education.
Google for Education streamlines instruction, collaboration and classroom management. This one-stop shop offers ready-made templates and lesson ideas to help organize assignments, share materials and provide essential feedback to students, all while seamlessly integrating with Google Workspace tools.
Additional Helpful Free Teacher Resources
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a free, nonprofit online learning platform that provides standards-aligned instructional videos, practice exercises, and personalized learning pathways in subjects like math, science and ELA. Their content is created by experts and provides tools that teachers can use to identify gaps in learning. They can assign targeted practice, monitor progress with data dashboards and support flipped classroom models.
National Geographic Education
National Geographic Education is a free, standards-aligned resource hub stemming from the National Geographic Society. With a strong emphasis on geography, climate, ecosystems and inquiry-based learning, this digital learning tool provides multimedia, structured lesson plans and activities that help deepen students’ understanding of various environments.
Scholastic Teachables
Scholastic Teachables is not only for teachers, but also for parents and homeschoolers. It’s an online database of printable educational resources and most items are free, while some require a purchase. This platform offers ready-to-use lesson plans, classroom worksheets, activity sheets, mini-books and teaching tools for grades pre-K-8 across various subjects. Although Scholastic Teachables prides itself on its vast and vetted collection of high-quality printable resources, it lacks a digital interactive component.
How to Choose the Best Free Lesson Plan Resource
With numerous free lesson plans for teachers available online, it’s essential to select those that best support students’ needs. Coupled with free reading resources for teachers, utilizing lesson planning tools helps teachers create engaging and relevant lesson plans. Here are some key ways to help you choose high-quality resources:
- Standard alignment: Ensuring that the resource is standards-aligned will ensure that lessons support learning goals.
- Grade appropriateness: Checking for grade appropriateness ensures that resource materials meet students where they are, such as reading level, cognitive demand and pacing.
- Multimedia variety: Strong platforms offer a diverse selection of multimedia to support different learning styles while keeping students engaged.
- Adaptability: There is no such thing as a cookie-cutter classroom. Therefore, why would we choose resources that teachers can’t modify for diverse students? High-quality resources enable teachers to personalize instruction without needing to start from scratch.
FAQs
It’s no secret that education is constantly evolving to meet the needs of both students and teachers. As teachers, we must strive to be life-long learners equipped with the latest resources to ensure our craft is not perfect, but a skilled practice.
What makes a good free lesson plan resource?
The strongest resources are adaptable to students’ needs, standards-aligned, grade-appropriate and engaging.
Are free lesson plans aligned to state standards?
Yes! Many free teacher resources provide lessons that are aligned to Common Core or state standards.
Can I modify free lesson plans for my classroom?
Yes! Teachers are creative by nature, and adapting free lessons for our classrooms demonstrates personalized learning and differentiation.
American College of Education offers flexible, affordable and quality programs that support your career growth and development as a teacher.
