Welcome to Elementary School Teaching Resources
These lessons have been designed by elementary school teachers. The teacher-authors of the lessons have followed a standard format, which we hope you will find helpful. For many of the lessons, there are handouts that can be downloaded and changed for your own needs or printed out exactly as they appear on the site.
Titles of lessons appear in the column at right. When you click on one of these descriptive titles, you will go to a lesson plan with a variety of exercises and clearly identified skill sets.
Each lesson is organized as follows:
- Lesson title
- Overview: This section contains a brief overview of the lesson, including a list of the materials needed, the time suggested for completing the whole lesson and the individual activities within it, and the state or National Council of Social Studies standards the lesson meets.
- Historical background and bibliography: This section offers a brief introduction to the historical context and key developments, with a bibliography of recommended readings for instructors and students.
- Guiding questions: This section provides the esential question that guides student learning throughout the lesson and the answer to which meets the lesson's learning objective.
- Learning objectives: The learning objectives are oriented to student achievement and outline the student outcomes for each lesson.
- Activities: This section provides a description of how teachers direct and instruct each component of the lesson and how students perform and complete various activities.
- Assessment: This section suggests methods of assessment for each lesson and culminating activities.
- Extending the lesson: This section provides a list of additional activities and recommendations of helpful websites.