Sign up for three free months of digital content
I am so grateful for all of the content that publishers, museums, educational organizations, and many others have made available for free during this crazy season. I know that I speak for teachers everywhere: thank you so much!
Now, it's time to add Kids Discover to the list. In an offer released yesterday, individual teachers, schools, and entire districts can sign up for free digital access through the end of June.
I have many issues of Kids Discover print magazines in my classroom library and I've used them in both my English and History classes (see my post about Jackie Robinson, for example). Kids Discover regularly releases digital content, such as infographics, in their email newsletters, but typically, classroom plans start at $20/month.
As part of our distance learning plan for the rest of the school year, each department at my school has to create two weekly lessons that any student in the school, regardless of grade level, could complete. When it's my turn to create one of these lessons for the history department, I think I'll use material from Kids Discover.
There are a few things that I really like about Kids Discover's digital content. First, it's visually appealing, with well-laid out designs that incorporate lots of whitespace (great for struggling readers), and large, colorful photos and illustrations. Second, all of the content is written at three lexile levels, so teachers can present the same content to all of their students, regardless of their reading ability, which is often a struggle for secondary-level content teachers.
Next, you can search for materials based on state content standards. You enter your state, grade level, and subject, then scroll down to the topics you're teaching. You'll see links to all of the units that correlate that standard, and you can then assign all or portions of the units by adding them to your classroom.
Other nice features include the digital toolbar which allows you to listen to the audio of the text and has a dictionary, a translation tool, and a ruler to mask text; a "quick quiz" of 2-4 questions that you have the option of assigning; and a login code for each class, so student sign-up is easy.
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