The Calendar is one of my favorite things within Discovery Education and it has been in place since we were called unitedstreaming. Each day is broken into different subject areas. Each subject area features something that happened on that day in history. My favorite day on the calendar is March 12 in the subject area of Science. If you follow that path you will find that the first parachute jump from a plane happened on March 12, 1912. I like to imagine what that dinner conversation was like on March 11, 1912. At that point no one had ever jumped out of a plane...at least willingly! What do you think that guy was saying to his wife, girlfriend, mom, etc. that night as plates were being passed around? Even better, a colleague of mine - Austin Dolan, thought that this calendar event would make a great writing prompt. His idea was so creative. Make the students journalists covering this event. What would they be writing about as this man fell from the sky for the very first time? The Thematic Focus is yet another way to find great teaching topics with lots of themed content. Each focus area includes resources like discussion guides and lesson plans by grade level. Each focus area also includes links to media, activities and calendar events and articles. My favorite Foci? Well thanks for asking. I like the ones on AfricanAmerican History and Authors and Great Books II.
The Discovery Atlas Interactive Map (and Discovery Atlas Canada for my Canadian friends) is a pretty cool tool. By clicking on this map you will find videos related to culture, history, government and the natural world. And just like everything else, you can place a link to the map in your My Content area (see issue on 4/2) or assign it directly to your students (see issue on 1/18). One of my favorite examples of using the Discovery Atlas Interactive Map comes from Fairfax, VA. There was a middle school teacher there who was using the atlas to help her students learn about Africa. She challenged her students to become Ministers of Tourism. Each student chose a country and, using the content found within the atlas, created short tourism videos that promoted the different cultures, governments, animals, and history that you will find when visiting their country.