Discovery Education History Curriculum for Coronado Middle School
A textbook selection committee, comprised of teachers from Coronado Middle School, reviewed several History textbooks at the SD County Office of Education in October 2017. The committee did an in depth review of National Geographic and Discovery Education. The committee found that the California Standards based program, Discovery Education, best aligns with the rigorous instructional program at CMS. The last history adoption at CMS was in 2003.
Ananda Dejarnette, History Department Leader, the CMS History Department and the CMS Special Education Department attended trainings for National Geographic and Discovery Education in Fall 2017/Winter 2018 to prepare for the pilots which began in February 2018.
After completing the pilots, the team has found Discovery Education to be an excellent curriculum choice for CMS because of its rigor, text complexity, standards alignment, engaging activities for writing, vocabulary and grammar, the shared platform that allows teachers to provide real time feedback, and the strong writing skills that students develop. Students have access to a wide variety content which aligns with California English Language Arts Framework and Standards.
Discovery Education overview:
Students have access to amazing videos, photographs, audio recordings, interactive maps, and a wide variety of learning activities. Plus, the Social Studies Techbook is always up-to-date, with timely and relevant content added frequently.
Inquiry-Based Instruction
The content is designed to facilitate inquiry and pairs core content with compelling, thought-provoking essential questions. Students derive meaning by analyzing and discussing a wealth of primary and secondary resources and conducting document-based investigations. Through engaging inquiry activities, students raise and address compelling questions, conduct research, and synthesize and evaluate information. Students demonstrate learning independently and in groups by producing creative multimedia content, engaging in debates, making research-based oral and written arguments, and creating visual and graphic displays such as mind maps, sketches, political cartoons, and museum exhibits.
Multiple Perspectives
Students learn about historical and current events and occurrences by examining the varying experiences and perspectives of those impacted. Students are exposed to a wide variety of voices from the past and from around the world through a rich library of primary and secondary sources. In some activities, students deepen their understanding of historical events by stepping into the shoes of various personas who lived through them. This approach to social studies helps students understand the complexities of human interaction and develop an appreciation and respect for people from varying cultural, ethnic, geographic, and economic backgrounds.
Enhance Literacy Skills
The techbook is designed to facilitate literacy development and includes teacher resources that tie content and activities to specific core literacy skills. Content includes graphic organizers and other note-taking tools that support informational text analysis. Activities provide thoughtful procedures for analysis of primary sources, literary text, and visuals.
Civic Engagement
Civic engagement is ignited! Students learn about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and various ways in which citizens participate and make a difference in their communities, in the nation, and in the world through political processes and other productive, impactful means. Through the study of history and social science concepts, students develop the tools to understand the broader context of current events, analyze information, make informed decisions, and engage in civic life.
Differentiating Instruction
Teachers are able to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners. The core content is presented in a wide variety of text-based and visual formats and ability levels. For example, the core text has been written at two different grade levels and in Spanish.
Text-to-speech is available on demand, and students can interact with text by note-taking and highlighting as they read. Key concepts are assessed in multiple ways, including selected-response items, constructed-response writing prompts, and student creation of authentic products. Finally, detailed model lesson plans and activity teacher guides provide helpful suggestions for making inquiry-based learning opportunities accessible to all students in the social studies classroom.
Meaningful Assessment
There are a variety of tools and strategies for formative and summative assessment. These resources are incorporated throughout the learning process and reflect the inquiry-based approach to instruction. Resources include constructed-response items, project-based activities, primary source investigations, authentic work products, and selected-response items.
For more information, please visit http://www.discoveryeducation.com/CaliforniaSS/
CMS teacher feedback is below:
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Structure of Book
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Hard copy will allow for additional opportunities for students to detach from tech. Will include the text from 5E’s.
Online text is well organized and we still have access to “unplugged” lessons
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Online resources
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- There are many options and additional resources such as videos, political cartoons, articles and primary sources to help students understand the content.
- Links to videos, primary source,
- Integrated resource for the students- readings are integrated with video, primary sources, visuals, etc.
- ELD - not specific ELD built into the techbook but the Graphic organizers and organization offer scaffolding for all students to be able to access the curriculum
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Content
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- Fits better with Framework in regards to content covered. Good essential questions and investigations.
- Great vocabulary links, videos, and different resources. Also, provides connections to modern day.
- Aligns with framework.Each segment has guiding questions that link back to the Essential Question for the chapters.
- Activities include literacy and arts connections (ex: Reading poems from Anne Bradstreet & Phyllis Wheatley, analyzing the poems for poetic devices and evidence of speaker background, then writing their own poem).
- Text-to-speech is available as a reading support.
- Nice visual overview of the progression of history units.
- Embedded tools to help support students as they read.
- Extension activities (videos, articles, etc) to provide more information about specific topics.
- Writing assessments align with writing standards
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Rigor
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- Follows the 5E lesson format
- C3 (College, Career and Civic Life) Standards embedded
- ELA standards embedded
- Much more rigorous than NatGeo
- Deep questions with learning targets
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Teacher planning/
implementation
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- Model lessons are easy to follow and implement
- Provides teacher with “Model Lesson” that provides entire overview of unit with links to activities, assessments, videos, primary source documents, readings, other resources, etc.
- Assessments and interactive activities are embedded in the program. The projects and assessments are varied and could potentially allow students choice to show their learning
- Ability to manage your students and assignments through an online “gradebook” feature
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Student engagement
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- Activities are engaging and provide multiple choice opportunities
- Great activities that provide students with choice.
- Elaborate activities are high interest
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Misc.
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- Online making changes and accepting feedback.
- Teachers have more time and energy to support the personalized learning of each student in the classroom.
- Time teachers are not spending creating curriculum is therefore spent being more engaged, spending more one to one time with students, and spending time integrating experiential activities to enhance curriculum
- Multiple perspectives that are often left out are included (women, children)
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