By Jessica Sanders

You spend hours lesson planning each week, but this isn’t the only reason this process sucks, is it? “It’s not just the writing of the plans that is laborious; it’s the intellectual contemplation that goes into it. I must figure out ways to make my instruction clear and engaging,” says Marilyn Anderson Rhames, former writing teacher.

Luckily, there are plenty of resources to address every difficult aspect of planning. We’ve collected a list of them here to help you save time, discover new ideas, and find templates—all of which will help make the process of lesson planning suck less.

Be More Effective and Efficient

Strategies for Effective Lesson Planning (Center for Research on Learning and Teaching)

The New Teacher’s Guide to Creating Lesson Plans (Scholastic)

10 Online Lesson Planning Resources to Help You Save Time (Blog.Learn2Earn)

5 Tips to Get Lesson Plans Done Faster (Quizbean)

5 Easy Tips for Making Great Lesson Plans (Blog.Enroll)

Lesson Planning Tips for Any Grade (Huntington Learning Center)

5 Tips for New Teachers: Adding Apps to Lesson Plans (Imperio)

Get Ideas for Creativity and Engagement

40 Ways to Make Time for Creativity in Your Lessons (WeAreTeachers)

Teacher-Tested Ways to Keep Class Interesting (BusyTeacher)

5 Ways to Make Math Lessons More Engaging (Knewton Blog)

Make it Easier

5 Ways OneNote Makes Digital Lesson Planning Easier (Gaggle)

3 Tools to Easily Create Lesson Plans (Educational Technology and Mobile Learning)

Simplify With These 12 Lesson Planning Tools (Graphite)

Use Templates

Share My Lesson Teacher Tool Kits for Pre-K to High School (ShareMyLesson)

Free, Downloadable Lesson Plan Templates (K12Reader)

10 Lesson Planning Resources and Templates (TeachThought)

Discovery Education Lesson Plan Library (Discovery Education)

Bonus: Find Your Zen

“Lesson planning for me has to be done in the right state of mind. I need solace. I need to zone out on all other responsibilities.” – Anderson Rhames

3 Simple Tools to Become a Reflective Teacher (Blog.Learn2Earn)

How to Relax Your Mind in 2 Minutes (CoolCatTeacher)

3 Ways to Manage Workload Stress (Blog.Learn2Earn)

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