Lesson Planning (Secondary)

You can find lesson ideas and learning activities in some Education databases by limiting to the correct content type or choosing effective subject headings and keywords. Below are tips for finding lesson ideas in three major Education databases.

You can find lesson plans and learning activities in Education Source by selecting Lesson Plan in the Document Type box under "Limit your results" on the main search page.

In many scholarly information sources, "activity programs" is a term used to describe lesson plans and learning activities in which students are actively involved. Incorporating this phrase in your keyword searching is another way to locate lesson planning materials in databases. When searching in Education Source, you can type activity programs and select SU Subject as your search field, as demonstrated in the example below:

You can be even more specific by using any of the following phrases, which are also included as subject headings in Education Source:

• Activity programs in education 
• Activity programs in special education  
• Activity programs in multicultural education  

By grade level:

• Activity programs in elementary education  
• Activity programs in primary education   
• Activity programs in secondary education     
• Activity programs in early childhood education    
• Activity programs in preschool education 
• Activity programs in middle school education    
• Activity programs in kindergarten    
• Activity programs in higher education    

By subject:

• Activity programs in agricultural education 
• Activity programs in science education       
• Activity programs in nature study   
• Activity programs in natural history education    
• Activity programs in environmental education    
• Activity programs in entomology education    
• Activity programs in ecology education      
• Activity programs in botany education    
• Activity programs in biology education    
• Activity programs in astronomy education    
• Activity programs in art education   

In school libraries:

• Activity programs in school libraries    
• Activity programs in elementary school libraries    
• Activity programs in middle school libraries    
• Activity programs in junior high school libraries    
• Activity programs in high school libraries    

Teacher Reference Center does not have a way to limit your search results by content type; however, all of the activity program subject headings from Education Source can also be used as keywords when searching in Teacher Reference Center:

You can find lesson plans and learning activities in ERIC by selecting Guides - Classroom - Teacher in the Publication Type box under "Limit your results" on the main search page.

As in Education Source, you can use subject headings in your keyword search as another way to find lesson plan ideas in ERIC. In this database, you can use the subject heading learning activities and select DE Descriptors [exact] or SU Descriptors to find lesson ideas in which learners are actively engaged: