How do I search for  lesson plans in the Education Library?

There are many places where lesson plans may be found. Follow these steps to maximize results in your subject areas.

1) Start with Ministry of Education lesson examples. For grades 9-12, check Course Profiles at Curriculum Services Canada. For K-8, check the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner (OCUP) units by searching QCAT using the phrase "ontario curriculum unit" either with a specific grade (e.g. grade 4) or a general subject area (e.g. science). OCUP units are also listed in the Ontario Educational Resource Bank (OERB) described in the E-learning Ontario initiative, but OERB is currently restricted to in-service teachers.

2) Find an appropriate textbook for your topic using the How To Find ... Textbooks guide. Teacher guides are available for many of the new textbooks on Floor 2 and these provide ideas on how to teach with the textbook as well as how to extend lessons with other types of resources and activities. Ministry-approved textbooks are given on the Trillium List.

3) Find books that offer lesson ideas. In QCAT, select Education Library as your Search Limit. Select Keyword Boolean as your Search by method. Use ? to expand words; use OR to broaden searches with synonyms. Use AND to combine terms; use " " around phrases.

• ecology and (lesson? or teaching or activit?)
• "creative writing" and (lesson? or teaching or activit?)
• physics and (lab? or demo? or activit?)

4) Use the Lesson Planning Aids provided at the Prof 190/191 website for tips and templates. For other ideas on what a lesson plan might look like, search QCAT using keyword boolean to combine terms:

• "lesson planning" and elementary
• "curriculum planning" and mathematics

5) Check known association websites that specialize in the teaching of your disipline. Consult the directory of Ontario secondary school subject associations provided at OSSTF (under Training >> Professional Development >> Subject Associations).
Also check national teachers associations such as:

• National Science Teachers Association
• National Council of Teachers of English. To access all their subscription resources, enter from the library home page for login information. Under Find Articles, click on Databases, and type NCTE into the open database box.

6) Find articles that document specific lesson ideas and units.

• Education Research Complete
  To isolate lessons, put your topic in one concept box and a combination of synonyms (used in ERC) describing the type of material you want in another concept box: lesson planning or activit* or teaching. Add a level in another concept box, such as elementary or secondary. To narrow results further, select the subject field as the place you want your words searched. If you get too few hits with this approach, do not limit the search to a subject field.

  

• ERIC: Education Resources Information Center
  Includes full text journals and .5 million teaching documents. To isolate lessons, put your topic in one concept box and a combination of synonyms (used in ERIC) describing the type of material you want in another concept box: guides or lesson* or curriculum or units or activities. Add a level in a third concept box. To narrow results further, select the subject field as the place you want your words searched. If you get too few hits with this approach, do not limit the search to a subject field.

  

• PEEL: Project for Enhancing Effective Learning

  PEEL is a collection of quality teaching ideas from K-12 school teachers in Australia. Refer to the guide for searching PEEL.

7) Find websites that present quality lesson plans. Some of the best sites for lesson plans are:

• CBC Archives. Canadian content with audio and video. Scroll down to "For Teachers" and search for activities, interviews, and webquests.
• Thinkfinity. Discipline specific kindergarten through higher education resources from national associations and institutes of education.

Focus a search in Google using multiple search operators such as quotation marks for phrases and restriction of your search words to the titles of websites (i.e. intitle: or allintitle:)

• intitle:"creative writing" teaching "high school"
• intitle:"brave new world" Huxley teaching

Refer to Google Power Teacher for detailed search tips.