Discovery Education today announced a slate of new services and curricula to coincide with the fall semester. eSchool snuck a sneak peek with Lance Rougeux, Senior Vice President of Curriculum, Instruction, and Student Engagement, on some specifics. Click below to listen and scroll down for details and selected edited highlights:
Creating Curious Classrooms is a free professional learning series for school and science curriculum leaders that takes a fresh approach to how the latest digital resources and tools can be integrated into instruction to drive engagement. Live and on-demand sessions will provide participants with examples of how teachers from across the country can create and deliver science lessons that unlock student curiosity in grades K-12 and inspire exploration of the world around them.
It’s new professional learning pathway that focuses on practical strategies. We know we have a lot of new teachers and teachers coming in from other fields, whether it’s from the military or from business careers. This really dives into ideas that ultimately are research based, but that also get kids interested and excited —LR.
Included in the latest updates coming to Discovery Education Experience:
· Discovery Education’s all-new DE original series, Need to Know, provides DE-produced videos and ready-to-use lessons for grades K-5 that help educators engage students and facilitate classroom discourse on important United States historical events. Utilizing historical artifacts that reflect influential moments in history, educators guide students through structured learning experiences and activities that provide opportunities for text analysis and collaboration. Literacy supports are woven throughout lessons and enhance teachers’ literacy instruction.
· The Electric Company: K-2 ELA Collection, coming to the exclusive Sesame Learning Channel, provides engaging, research-based resources and lessons that support young students in becoming proficient readers, language learners, and communicators. The collection includes learner-centered videos featuring characters from The Electric Company, ready-to-use presentation materials, professional development resources, and lesson plans.
· New resources from our trusted educational partners, spanning grades and subjects – including Shark Week 2023, The Fixies, Coyote Peterson: Brave Wilderness, NASA, Vooks, Fable Cottage, Panasonic, and more! From videos to instructional activities to reading passages to animated storybooks and more – there’s something for everyone to inspire learning and ignite curiosity.
In addition, Discovery Education Experience is being updated to provide users a more personal experience, even better, faster search results, and improved administrative and integration functions that make using this service easier than ever. Finally, Discovery Education Experience will soon allow users access to DoodleMath. A product of DoodleLearning, which joined the Discovery Education family in 2022, DoodleMath is a K-5 math practice solution personalized to each student’s need.
Ultimately, we don’t want it to be a passive experience. We heard during the pandemic teachers wanting to say, “Go explore something, make something, then send it back to me because I’m not able to facilitate that in person.” And as we get back to this more normal year, we’ve heard that again and again: “I want my kids making something.” —LR
Discovery Education’s Science Techbook has also been updated with more than 100 re-imagined virtual labs and interactives to support K-8 science explorations. The Discovery Education Science Techbook series is a comprehensive, research-backed science solution for grades K-12. Used in classrooms across the United States, the Science Techbooks drive engagement with exclusive, interactive digital content and companion printed resources.
Pivot Interactives—the online science curriculum supplement that helps teachers provide more phenomena-based, active learning, without adding to their plates—has also been enhanced for back-to-school. New this Fall are:
· Draggable tasks structured to incrementally develop students’ skills in the science practices make science now easier to teach, learn, and assess with auto-grading.
· Immediate, guided feedback and embedded scaffolding that provides students the guidance they need when they need it and saves teachers hours they can use to deepen relationships in the classroom.
· Deep randomization of content and variables adds a layer of novelty to activities and assures students are demonstrating authentic learning of the scientific practices authentically.
New this Fall to Mystery Science—the unique, standards-aligned science curriculum for grades K-5— are updated open-and-go lessons and units for grades 2-4. These lessons and units, which include step-by-step, hands-on activities exploring scientific phenomena, help students stay curious by answering the “real life” science questions asked by students nationwide. The Mystery Science team is also updating their Standards Alignment Guide to better help teachers plan their entire year of standards-based instruction.
In addition, Discovery Education’s corporate partners are providing educators an array of back-to-school resources supporting a variety of topics, including:
Immersive learning. With Verizon, educators can take augmented reality to a new level with a trip to Mars in 2072 via two augmented reality apps, TimePod and Sandbox AR. These experiences are accompanied by standards-aligned lessons, all available on Discovery Education Experience, smartphone app stores, and the Verizon Innovative Learning HQ.
STEM career explorations. The STEM Careers Coalition™ offers a collection of resources spotlighting careers in STEM. Students can see people like them working while diving deeper into STEM topics through a variety of hands-on, lessons and activities. Teachers can then introduce students to STEM with over 200 resources designed to uncover students’ STEM skills and activate future solution seekers. The new Curiosity Circle collection features a variety of video vignettes designed for grades K-5.
Spark inspiration: Launching for back to school, this new video topic series from Boeing transports students across the globe to explore technology and innovation, diversity and culture, and commitment to sustainability and problem-solving through the lens of different people and countries.
Questioning is a big part of what we do. How do we build in and tap into the kids mindset? Natural curiosity through questions is a product principle of ours. —LR
All educators using Discovery Education’s digital resources have access to the Discovery Education Network. A global community of education professionals, the Discovery Education Network connects members across school systems and around the world through social media, virtual conferences, and in-person events, fostering valuable idea sharing and inspiration.
To learn more about Discovery Education’s plans to ignite student curiosity throughout the Fall, visit the Curiosity homepage here.
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