With the goals of literacy being the ability to understand and to be understood, Discovery Education provides resources that support both comprehension and communication.
Watch our archived webinar around Literacy.
Comprehension
Comprehension of information is addressed through high-quality digital media and the implementation of effective instructional strategies. Discovery Education offers a variety of multimodal resources, including images, audio, video, text, interactives, and more. Analyzing, critiquing, and evaluating a variety of multimedia texts is an important part of digital literacy.
Searching for Resources
Discovery Education offers a wide variety of resources including videos, images, audiobooks, poetry, podcasts, songs, interactive activities, and reading passages. The high quality multimodal digital content, differentiation tools, and language support will bolster teaching and learning in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. In addition to filtering all resources by grade band, reading level, teachers can also search by different languages in selecting appropriate resources to help develop background knowledge which will increase student motivation. | LEARN MORE ABOUT SEARCHING FOR RESOURCES.
Closed Caption and Transcripts
Discovery Education feature videos with closed caption and transcripts that provide additional language support for students. Closed caption and video transcript features provide an additional modality of print text when paired with a video’s visuals and audio. Closed captions are a powerful tool for students to fully understand key concepts, especially when dealing with technical subjects. Closed captions support students with word knowledge, information retention, content recall, nuanced language, and syntax. The settings for closed captions can be adjusted to modify text color, background color, and font size. Transcripts provide similar support as Closed Captioning, but are searchable for specific vocabulary. | LEARN MORE ABOUT CLOSED CAPTIONS AND TRANSCRIPTS.
Text Support
Because verbal skills develop more quickly than reading and writing skills, students may understand what is read aloud, even if they cannot read it themselves. All Discovery Education text resources include a read-aloud feature so that students can hear and understand the content. Settings can be adjusted to modify reading speed, highlight settings, font changes, and text mode settings. Additional tools such as a page mask and tracking ruler are also available to support students as they read. | LEARN MORE ABOUT TEXT FEATURES.
Audio Resources
The digital nature of content such as songs, and podcasts, provides additional opportunities for students to hear content and can be interacted with multiple times to support language development. Many of Discovery Education’s audio resources include printed lyrics or speech transcripts to make the resource accessible to all students regardless of reading or language ability. | LEARN MORE ABOUT AUDIO RESOURCES.
Instructional Strategies
The SOS Instructional Strategies series provides instructional ideas that support the analysis, critique, and evaluation of multimodal texts. Many can be applied to multiple asset types and support multiple thinking skills, like summarizing, inference and prediction, and identifying key ideas and details. Additional strategies also support vocabulary development by providing a scaffold for developing academic language. | EXPLORE THE SPOTLIGHT ON STRATEGIES OR GET STARTED WITH THE TOP 10 SOS FOR LITERACY.
Communication
Synthesizing information and creating multimedia texts allows students to demonstrate their learning and communicate ideas. Discovery Education provides opportunities for students to be content creators.
Discovery Education Studio provides students with a platform to demonstrate their understanding of a concept by integrating Discovery Education content as well as their own self-created content, like videos, images, oral text, and more. Teachers can record directions and upload it as a file to Studio so that can more easily interact with the same content as their peers. Resources can be curated on a board to guide learning and boards can be differentiated to meet the needs of the student. Just like other resources, Studio Boards can be assigned to a whole class, group of students, or a single student. | LEARN MORE ABOUT STUDIO.
Students can create their own videos to communicate original ideas using Discovery Education editable videos. When a video is editable, students and teachers know they have the rights to mix that content to make something of their own, like adding their narration to communicate a new idea, green-screening to make themselves part of the story, or remixing different media types to formulate an argument.
Featured Channels
- Literacy: Consider the definition of literacy: the ability to read and write. This definition can be expanded to include the ability to evaluate sources and media; that is, to analyze content that is read or viewed. Explore developments in literacy around the world and throughout history and develop your literacy and media literacy skills.
- Reading Rainbow: Join host LeVar Burton as he discovers the places and faces waiting inside books. This classic video series ignites a love of learning and enriches reading experiences for children of all ages.
- Reading Comprehension: Different texts offer different types of information or entertainment, and it’s important to understand how to utilize these texts. Improve your understanding of literature by exploring how to analyze and comprehend texts. This collection looks at the different ways you can analyze, predict, summarize, and even learn from all types of writing.
- Reading: Decoding: Improve your reading by learning skills and strategies you can use to decode unfamiliar words. Learn common spellings of long vowel sounds. Recognize tricky words that don't follow ordinary spelling patterns. Finally, learn how to use root words, prefixes, and suffixes to analyze an unfamiliar word and determine its meaning.
- Word Development: Discuss different types of words and the relationships among them. A contraction is a new word formed by putting two words together and replacing one of the letters with an apostrophe. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings. Synonyms are words that have very similar meanings, while antonyms are words that have opposite meanings. Slang refers to non-standard language that is commonly used. Understanding these different types of words, along with common word roots, will help improve your vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing skills.
- Vocabulary Development: Improve your vocabulary by learning strategies you can use to figure out new and unfamiliar words when you read. Often you can use context clues in nearby phrases or sentences to help you determine what an unfamiliar word means. You can also use your knowledge of root words, prefixes, and suffixes to analyze an unfamiliar word and determine its meaning. Finally, you can use reference tools such as a dictionary or glossary.
- Celebrate Reading: Celebrate reading! Reading is a complex cognitive process in which meaning is derived from the process of decoding symbols. People read to learn language, to share ideas, and to communicate. Access to information through the written word has not always been widely spread. In the past, only a privileged few owned books, could gain admittance to libraries, or could read. Today, reading is considered a fundamental aspect of education, and public libraries make written materials available to the general population for reference or borrowing.
- Mathematical Communication: Convey your mathematical ideas with mathematical communication. Communication is an essential part of mathematics. It is a way of sharing ideas, clarifying understanding, and strengthening your mathematical thinking. Learn about symbols, data displays, mathematical vocabulary, and more.
- Communication in Science: Communicate the results of experiments and observations through reports and visual data representations like tables, graphs, and charts. Communication is the final step in the scientific method, the process by which scientists make discoveries. For new knowledge to change existing theories, technologies, and methods, it must be available and comprehensible to others. Determining the best way to present and communicate results is critical to advancing scientific knowledge.
- Visual Classroom: The Language of Science and Math: Learn the Language of Science and Math with this series of popular programs from Visual Classroom. This series, available in English and Spanish, provides a simple and straightforward approach helping elementary school students to learn science and math concepts, as well as the related vocabulary. Designed to be easy to use, each subject is organized in short, clear, and engaging chapters, to build understanding of the concepts.
- WordGirl: Follow the adventures of WordGirl as she fights off evil villains with superhuman powers and learns new vocabulary words every day.
- Maya and Miguel: Immerses viewers into the colorful, language-filled adventures of Maya and Miguel in order to support English language acquisition and promote the value of a culturally diverse society. Maya and Miguel demonstrate the importance of doing good for family and community, as well as the philosophy that shared happiness is greater than personal gain. Each episode features key conversational words to help expand student vocabulary.
- Grammar: Are you inspired by clear communication and well-crafted writing? Understanding grammar can put you at the top of your game in writing and speaking. Explore the fundamentals of grammar to become more successful at communicating everyday.