By Jessica Sanders

If you look in the same places for lesson ideas every time, you—and your students—will get bored.

Change it up this year by sourcing your inspiration, ideas and resources from a variety of awesome websites that help you step out of the box. Your students will love the new material and you’ll find much-needed encouragement to create more engaging content for the classroom.

More: 17 Resources to Make Lesson Planning Suck Less

DocsTeach

Are you teaching a lesson on World War II or the Depression Era, but don’t know how to make it pop? Head over to DocsTeach where you’ll find thousands of primary sources, including photos, maps, posters, speeches and videos to inspire you. The website also offers resources to use in the lesson and allows you to create your own activities that students can do through the site, giving them direct access to the primary sources.

Education World

This website is a staple for many reasons, one of which is their impressive list of lesson ideas for everything from sequencing and language to anagrams and research skills. All of these mini lessons are perfect for small group activities or to fill gaps in your current lesson plan.

C-Span Classroom

If you want to bring the real world into your classroom, but can’t think of a good way to do it, use C-Span Classroom. With a free account, you can access lesson plan ideas and without it you can still use “This Day in History” to come up with a fun lesson idea quickly.

More: 5 Digital Citizenship Lessons for 21st Century Learners

NeoK12

This website is overflowing with lesson ideas, educational videos and games for teachers in grades K-12. It’s 100 percent safe for student browsing as well, so you can choose the quizzes or lessons and let your students get started without worrying about what they’ll find. To access some features and content, you must be a paid subscriber, which costs $29.95 annually.

Apple.Com: Teacher Inspiration

If you’re an Apple school or Apple-loving teacher, this will be your new favorite website for lesson ideas. Small story snippets lead you to apps you can find on iTunes while inspiring your next lesson. For example, one article lead to this awesome collection of assessment apps, for purchase in the iTunes store.

ReadWriteThink

All the creative lesson ideas on this website are standards-aligned, so you can feel confident you’re helping students master important skills as they learn. Written by teachers, scholars and education professionals, you’ll immediately connect with the ideas here.

Crayola

Bring art into your classroom with the awesomely creative lesson ideas offered on Crayola.com. You’ll find great ideas for every subject, including science, reading, social studies and language arts. Specify subject, sub category, and grade in the search bar to find the perfect ideas for your students.

More: 10 Online Lesson Planning Resources

Discovery Education

If you’re in need of some fresh lesson ideas, this is the place to go. You’ll find resources for lessons on farm to table, urban gardening, everyday math, children around the world and so much more. Use this website to add a bit of fun into lessons that are lagging.

Share My Lesson

This is a more traditional site for finding lesson ideas, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. With an account, you gain access to more than 300,000 lesson ideas, all from other teachers like yourself. Don’t miss their supplemental resources from PBS News Hour and Listen Current and check out the Featured Lessons section for quick ideas if you’re in a pinch.

Try Engineering

Bring STEM into your classroom with a little inspiration from Try Engineering. Each lesson plan can be downloaded as a jam-packed PDF that lists lesson objectives, anticipated learner outcomes, curriculum alignment specifics, links to recommended reading and YouTube videos and an estimated time needed. Use the entire lesson or take the main ideas and resources and build your own.

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