Lesson Planet
A short subscription to Lesson Planet, a search engine, was provided free for our use to review. A subscription costs $39.95 for one year’s access to the ad-free site. Lesson Planet does offer a 10 day free trial so you can check everything out first.
You may search for lesson plans, worksheets or standards. There are nine subject areas: art & music, education, geography, health & nutrition, language arts, math, research resources, science & technology, and social sciences. Grades K-12 are included in the findings. There are many parameters to make the search as narrow or as broad as you like.
What makes this search engine different ? First, only education related materials will be returned in your search results. Some of the results were from sites requiring membership both free and paid. This adds some additional steps. Bothersome, but still quicker than weeding through pages of Google results. Second, these results are all rated by educators and tied to education standards. Thirdly, there are no ads.
If you find yourself wading through pages of unwanted returns when searching for just the right worksheet, this service is for you. If you are required by your state to meet the educational standards, this site will help with that. If you like knowing that these results have been tested by other educators, you will want to check into Lesson Planet.
To read what other Crew members thought of Lesson Planet, check out the links for their reviews here on the Crew blog.