Skip to main content

Informational Texts and Newsela

The Arizona College and Career Ready Standards (Common Core) require a greater balance between reading fiction and non-fiction in the classroom. In addition, we want students to be reading nonfiction content that is relevant to their lives and interests.

Last year we discovered Newsela (https://newsela.com/). Newsela is a site that brings daily news into the classroom and provides a way to foster reading comprehension. The news articles are from major publications and rewritten at different Lexile Levels. All students in a classroom can read the same content but at a level that is appropriate for them. The articles are of high interest and cover a wide variety of topics including science, health, money, and sports. The texts are common core aligned and many have quizzes to test comprehension and close reading. There are both free and premium accounts.

Newsela is quick and easy to use. Teachers register, create classes, and add students. Teachers can assign specific articles that are automatically leveled for the grade level of the class. When students log in they see the article(s) that have been assigned and can start reading.

Last week I visited a classroom where the teacher had just begun using Newsela with her students. She was really excited about being able to deliver this type of content to the students. The teacher had created her account and set up the class so the students could get log-ins. It's very engaging for the students and works well on the iPads!


Click here to view the Newsela Quick Start Guide for Teachers.

Enjoy!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Science Fair Projects

At the end of the year, many of our schools hold school wide science fairs. Students plan Science fair project tri-fold display board and implement projects and then present the process and resulting data on tri-fold display boards much like this. One class decided to go green and do away with using display boards. They conducted their experiments and recorded the data but rather than create paper reports they used their iPads. Project Data Graphs The students took pictures and video and created graphs and other visual representations and imported those into the Explain Everything app. During the science fair, students brought their iPads to the school's multipurpose room and presented their projects to attendees right from the iPads. In addition to using digital tools, these students are also developing their listening, speaking, and presentation skills - all vital to college and career readiness.

Flipped Training 2013, Day Four

Day Four: Putting It All Together Day 4 was focused on two things: creating videos and lesson planning. Two very important topics for flipped learning! Video Creation: While we encourage our teachers to create their own flipped learning videos, we also know that there are some great pre-made video resources available. We explored sites such as Khan Academy , Math Train , and Sophia . To help teachers understand why we encourage them to create their own videos, we showed the Katie Gimbar video entitled " Why It Has to Be Me ". Katie has been flipping for some time and has a great series of videos and we used several throughout the training. You can access them here . Teacher created videos help students feel more like they are right there with the teacher and extends their in class relationship. While video creating can get pretty complicated, we encourage teachers to just do "one take" videos without retakes or a lot of editing. If you m...

T. A. G. Strategy

We want our students to reflect on their own work but also to be able to give effective feedback to each other. This is true for writing, conversations, or digital work. It's tough for us as adults and even more difficult for our students - no matter the grade level. As we have started using Seesaw ( https://web.seesaw.me/ ) and its student Comment feature, I've seen lots of "I like ..." and "That's cool" comments. Not very meaningful. I recently came across this simple strategy called T.A.G: Tell, Ask, Give. An easy to remember acronym and a good way to get students started in making effective comments.  I've seen several variations but like these descriptors for the acronym: Tell - something you learned or was meaningful ("like" if they are specific about what they like) Ask - a question Give - a compliment or recommendation (depending upon the purpose for the comment) Download a pdf here . Here are some additional ...