Thursday, November 14, 2013

Non Fiction Reading with Newsela

Virgina Petit shared a great resource yesterday for non fiction articles that connect directly to the ELA Anchor Standards of the CCSS.  The clincher with Newsela is the ability to change the Lexile Reading Level of the article, customizing it for the class or the student.  Signing up was easy as a teacher.  It gives a class code to give to the students to sign up for the specific class.  No emails are needed for the students.  Google sign in is also an option.

These are high interest daily news articles focused around the topics war & peace, science, kids, money, law, health, and arts.  There are four different levels offered for each article, with the four ranges varying  from third grade to college prep levels.


Easily assign an article to a class.
 Here is a look at the beginning of the same article at two different reading levels.
660L 

1020L

Quiz adapts to the Reading Level as well.  
If a quiz is avaliable to take with the passage, it will show along the right hand side of the screen.  In the teacher view, it will show the question, the correct answer, as well as the standard the question is addressing.

 Both students and teachers have a binder at the top of the screen.  This allows for the students to see if a specific article has been assigned.  For the teacher, it gives a view of which anchor standards have been addressed, over all class scores, as well as being able to view individual student work.
Student View
This is just another site to add to your resource list.  This site is also iPad compatible, easily add the link to the log in page onto the iPad.
We can never have to many sources for non fiction!
Newsela is currently free and in BETA.