Twig Elementary: Digital Investigations

Digital Investigations are interactive activities and games to support student learning. They are embedded in some, but not all, Full Course lessons and Fast Track lessons.

The Table of Contents for each module uses the icon to indicate which lessons contain Digital Investigations. You can also reference the list of available Digital Investigations for Full Course lessons at the bottom of this article.

If the lesson contains a Digital Investigation, the investigation is automatically included when you assign the lesson. However, you can choose to share the investigation as a separate component via URL, Google Classroom, or Microsoft Teams. To access the shared activities, users must be logged in to Twig Science Elementary.

Landing page of a Digital Investigation for students in Grade 3.

To find and share Digital Investigations:

1. Log in to Twig Science Elementary.
2. Use the Lesson Explorer to select a grade level and access the modules for that grade.
3. Click on the green arrow at the bottom of a module tile to open up more information.
   
4. Select the Table of Contents tab. 
   
5. Click the corresponding green arrow to expand either the Full Course or Fast Track section.
   
6. Use the green arrows to open the Driving Questions and peruse the available resources. The key at the top of the page shows the symbol for Digital Investigation. In this example, Lesson 4 in Driving Question 2 contains an investigation.
   
7. Click the green arrow corresponding to the lesson to go to the lesson page's Overview tab.
   

8. You can now access the Digital Investigation from the lesson page in one of the following ways:

   Tab	Description
   A. Lesson tab or Digital Resources tab	Select the Lesson tab or the Digital Resources tab and then scroll down to the Investigate section of the page.
   B. Digital Twig Book	At the top of the lesson page, click Twig Book and then select Digital from the menu choices.

9. The header shows how much time to allot for the activity. There are also tabs to access the resource in English or Spanish. 
   

10. Use the applicable buttons to share the investigations on various platforms—Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, or a URL. (Sharing via Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams requires accounts with those platforms.)
    

     Reminder

    When you're sharing the Digital Investigation as a separate component, users must already be logged in to Twig Science Elementary in order to view it.

11. If you're sharing via URL: After clicking Share via URL Link, click Copy Link to obtain a shareable link you can paste elsewhere.
    
12. If applicable, click Start to open the investigation. 
    
13. Click on the interactive element to play the digital activity.
    Grade 3 example; click on a number:
    
    Kindergarten example; click on a letter:
    
    The following options are available once you're in a Digital Investigation, as shown in the picture below: 
    • A. Fullscreen
    • B. Mute/unmute
    • C. Closed Captioning - turn on subtitles in the same language you've selected for the activity.
    • D. Help/information: View instructions for the activity
      

List of available Digital Investigations (Full Course lessons)

Click on the headers below to see the Digital Investigations available in the Full Course lessons for each grade level.

Key: G= Grade, M = Module, DQ = Driving Question, L = Lesson
For example, G2 M1 DQ2 L3 means Grade 2 > Module 1 > Driving Question 2 > Lesson 3.