When talking with my colleagues, one of the frustrations they experience is finding good social studies lesson plans. Of course, one can always go to Teachers Pay Teachers to find lots of lessons, but many teachers are on a strict budget. They need high-quality resources for free. This post reviews two websites that offer elementary teachers access to hundreds of social studies lesson plans just by creating a free account. I did not receive any type of compensation from either website – these are just my opinions in an effort to help busy teachers do more in less time.
Social Studies Lesson Plans – Resource #1
My first recommendation is the website Education.com. To get started, you will need to create a free account by submitting your email and a password. There is a premium option, but you can still gain access to lots of lesson plans without paying for the premium membership. Here’s how you can find the social studies lesson plans you need:
- At the top of the website, click on Lesson Plans.
- On the left side of the screen, you can refine your search by choosing a grade or subject. If you choose to search by subject, there are sub-topics for you to choose from to continue filtering your search. Hovering over the image of the various lessons will give you a brief snippet and the grade level.
- Select the lesson you want to download. It will take you to a full-screen showing the complete lesson plan. Click on the purple button on the right side of the screen to download a PDF of the lesson.
- Print and/or save to your computer.
- Related learning resources will be shown at the bottom of the screen.
Social Studies Lesson Plans – Resource #2
My other recommendation for social studies lesson plans is a website called Share My Lesson. Again, all you need to do is create a free account. Unlike the other website, however, there is no premium option. Once you sign up, you have unlimited access to everything on their website.
- At the top of the website, select Grades and choose the range you prefer.
- Then select the subject. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen to find Social Studies.
- Choose a subtopic. For social studies in grades 3-5, there are almost 3,000 lessons to choose from!
- You can further refine your search by choosing standards, resource types, lesson tags, and events.
- Download the lesson to your computer.
Free Resource
I hope today’s post will make it a little easier to find the social studies lesson plans you need. To further help you, I am sharing a link to some FREE economics resources available in my TpT store. You might also want to read about how I integrate my reading and social studies lessons together in this blog post. What websites do you use when planning your social studies lessons? Share your favorites in the comments below. Happy Teaching!
~ Sally
Leave a Reply