Lesson
Plan Database Search
Rationale |
Standards | Review Process | How
to Submit Lessons
Unit
Plan/Lesson Plan Evaluation Form
(MS Word document, 50KB)
Rationale:
By the end of the Adventure of the American Mind Project's fourth year, AAM trained teachers had developed over six hundred lesson plans, unit plans, and activities that incorporate the use of the Library of Congress - National Digital Library primary resources. These lesson plans are a valuable resource to teachers in their quest for
examples of how to use primary resources in the classroom.
Also, these AAM teacher-created unit plans, lesson plans, and activities play an important role in demonstrating the practical and effective uses of digital resources in teaching and learning. The ERC has developed an Online Lesson Bank as a means for teachers to access and use these AAM Teacher-made lessons.
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Standards:
The development of AAM lesson plan standards involves best practice recommendations and suggestions from multiple sources. Standards gleaned from the Lesson Plan Evaluation Committee, American Memory Fellows lesson plans, The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM): Guidelines for Resource Evaluation and others were used in refining the standards given below.
Standards include
the following (see evaluation form above):
Copyright compliance and proper citation
Pedagogy (Instructional soundness/Clarity/Usability)
Technical soundness (links, images, etc.)
Historical accuracy
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Review
Process:
Lesson plans submitted for review are placed online in a restricted area. Each lesson plan is evaluated for acceptance into the Online Lesson database by a team of evaluators. The evaluators consist of technical staff, educators, and historians (Each evaluator is given access to the online plans and given a rating sheet, and list of plans to evaluate each month).
Lesson plans meeting standards are placed in an online database, on the AAM Web site. Lesson plans not meeting standards are sent back for updating and bringing up to standard. Whether or not to bring lesson plans up to AAM standards will be left up to the discretion of the lesson plan author. Re-submitted lesson plans will be reviewed again and upon achieving standards, placed online.
There are five searchable fields in the Lesson Plan database:
- Lesson Name
- Keyword
- Subject
- Grade Level
- Curriculum Standard
All Unit, Lesson, and Activity Plans have a first page with the following:
- Title of unit/lesson/activity
- Type of teaching unit (lesson plan, unit plan, or activity)
- Grade level(s)
- Time frame
- Subject matter
- Teacher information (name, school, AAM affiliation, e-mail address)
- Lesson plan description (2-3 sentences)
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