Thanks to this program and through the support of local partners such as sponsors Skydive Palatka, Jacksonville’s Firehouse Subs national franchise, and Grunt Style, I’ve been able to successfully participate in five, real, World War II-style parachute jumps. These jumps not only provided me the opportunity to earn my jump wings, but also improved my understanding of what our paratroopers experienced on D-Day, which I now pass onto my students.
High-Quality Digital Resources. I pair the hands-on learning about the D-Day invasion with dynamic digital lessons full of rich content. Our district uses the Discovery Education Social Studies Techbook and platform for history and social studies instruction, which I’ve found to be a particularly useful resource. Not only is the content incredibly powerful, but the Studio feature in Discovery Education’s resources is really useful in creating digital lessons that include additional content from other sources. I then pair the lessons I’ve created in Studio with various guided reading strategies.
Additionally, the lessons I create in the Techbook are perfectly suited for the Gradual Release model of instruction as we move through the content (I-Do, We-Do, and You-Do). For example, I would use the Techbook’s videos or reading passages to introduce a lesson and then assign students an elaborate investigation that students can complete in the You-Do section of the lesson. The additional reading features like Text-to-Speech are very helpful with readers of lower Lexiles and our ESOL students.
Microsoft Teams. While many of us began using Microsoft Teams during the remote and hybrid portions of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have found that it is incredibly useful in creating paperless lessons. I can embed all my assignments and content straight into a Teams post for my class to access directly. I also take a lot of the essential questions that the Techbook provides and create online posts that students can respond to during a lesson that has been created in Discovery Education’s Studio. The Studio feature can also be connected to Teams and the students can access it right away. This has made becoming a paperless educator much easier.
Thanks to these resources, I’ve been able to turn compelling events like the D-Day invasion into even more engaging, digital, learning experiences that bring complex moments in history to life. I encourage all teachers to find new ways to combine the resources of local community groups with state-of-the-art edtech resources to create exciting almost-paperless learning opportunities. To learn more about this work, visit this link.
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