Database Tutorials

ERIC

Overview

For broad help with searching, finding full text, creating citations, and saving articles for later, please see the Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) page.

Searching for Lesson Plans

ERIC is a great resource for finding lesson plans. To search for these, you'll have to do so from the Advanced Search, as you cannot select the options you'll need to in either Basic Search or from the Results page.

Type the topic of your lesson plan into the search boxes on the top. If you're having trouble finding relevant results, you can try broadening your terms (ex: from "solar system" to "space" or "astronomy") or narrowing them.

Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and you'll find two options that will be helpful: Education Level, and Intended Audience. You can see them outlined in red below:

For Education Level, you'll want to choose your group of students whether they are first graders, high schoolers, or adult learners. There are a myriad of options here, so you'll probably want to select all that apply. To do so, simply hold down the Ctrl key (on Macs, you'll want to click the Command key) as you are clicking on the options you'd like to select. They will all appear in blue once you've selected them.

For Intended Audience, there are two options you'll want to select if you are searching for lesson plan in particular: Practitioners and Teachers. As with the Education Level, you can select both of these options by holding down the Ctrl key (on Macs, you'll want to click the Command key) as you are clicking on the options you'd like to select. They will all appear in blue once you've selected them.

Click "Search" at the bottom of the page!

Getting Full-Text from the ERIC Website

For many articles, you can get the full text either in PDF directly in the database, or through WebBridge - for information on getting full text from those two sources, go to the Academic Search Premier page, as it will work exactly the same way.

However, ERIC will also direct you to the ERIC site on some occasions in order to download the full text. And the placement for this link is slightly different from the PDF download or the WebBridge link.

From the Results Page:

The link is directly below the title, author, and journal information and above the subject headings (rather than below the subject headings like for PDFs and WebBridge). The screenshot below shows the placement of all three types:

Click on the "FULL TEXT FROM ERIC" link, and you'll be redirected to the eric.ed.gov website where you can download the PDF of the article.

From the Detailed Record Page:

You can also click on the ERIC website link while you are in the detailed record for that article. But rather than having a nice little link up in the top left corner like you would for PDFs and WebBridge, the link is nestled in the article information under the heading "Availability". Here's what that page looks like, including where to click:

To get to the full text, click on the link directly after "Full Text from ERIC Available Online". Again, you'll be redirected to the eric.ed.gov website, and you can download a PDF from there.

Once You've Gotten to the ERIC Website:

Double-check that you've got the right article - the title will be at the top of the page and author and journal information will be below that.

To download the PDF of the article, click the link in the top right that says "Download full text". Your screen should look like this: