Lesson Planning
Free Resources for Teachers
Research is clear, and teachers, parents and students know: students learn best when active and building real-life skills. But a teacher’s day-to-day responsibilities quickly pile up. Between progression, curriculum standards, and grading, there’s little space left for teachers to realize active, skill-building learning.
We’re dedicated to supporting teachers to make these learning experiences a reality. Our work is designed by educators for educators around key insights from Learning Sciences research.
If you’re enjoying our resources, please share them with your colleagues, and let us know what you’d like to see next.
Skill Builders
Help your students develop relevant, important skills with these customizable lesson plans that are ready for any classroom, no matter what you teach.
Prepare to Plan
Motivate students to gain more independence with planning tools, templates, and time management strategies.
Ready, Set, Document!
Equip your students with the skills for great documentation and note-taking, enabling them to work more efficiently.
Project and Unit Builders
Build skills-forward projects and units with your own content and learning goals. These project and unit builders lead you through a backwards design process to create intentional learning experiences focused on active learning and effective feedback.
Develop and implement a summative group project tailored to the learning and skill goals of your unit.
Create a reading circles project tailored to your students’ needs and learning goals with a template, example project, and student facing materials.
Active Learning Activities
Sometimes our students don’t get as excited about our subject as we do. To help you spark some of that passion in your students, try one of our activities. Each incorporates active learning strategies, real-world skill development, and engaging out-of-the-box work.
Matter & Energy in Ecosystems
Model how matter and energy cycle through an ecosystem with this facilitation guide.
The Glass Castle
A facilitation guide for a full active reading unit to support students as they read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.
Templates and Examples
These easily customizable templates, organizers, and examples bring active and skills-forward activities into your classroom no matter your content.
This customizable bookmark helps you support students as they practice active reading and annotation.
Give your students choice and differentiate their learning processes with a simple classroom activity that works for any grade and subject.
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MORE TO EXPLORE
Professional Learning for Teachers
Incorporating active, skill-building experiences into all of your lessons is a tall order. Browse professional learning resources at your own pace, like our library professional development session guides.
Online Teaching Tools
The Quest Forward Learning Workspace offers online tools to make it easier for you to enable more active learning, add targeted skills practice, and more. Incorporate a small tool into your routine to level-up your students’ learning, or try the entire suite to replace your current LMS.