iPad: Week 19 - Newsela

Newsela reminds me of an app that I used 5 years ago when I was doing my Student Teaching in a Special Education classroom. We used it often because we loved that we could so easily change reading levels. We also loved that our simplest readers could still read the current events that we were discussing. Honestly, I can't remember the name of that site that we used, but Newsela is so similar and I have loved using it in my elementary classrooms.

I'm not going to go crazy in depth, but you can see that the premise of this app is the ability to assign articles for your students to read at their reading levels. They can also work on vocabulary and reading comprehension through the quizzes that are attached to many of the articles. There is also a feature on many articles that allows the article to be translated into Spanish. What a great tool for bilingual students/teachers.

There are a variety of articles to choose from - kids, arts, health, arts & culture, science, government & economics, war & peace, science & math, world history, sports, etc. It is important to keep our upper elementary and secondary students somewhat in tune with what is going on in the world around them. It is also important for them to read news type articles and for them to have discussions about the truths and opinions in articles. This helps our students think for themselves and form their own opinions, which grows strong men and women in the future.

For tips on Newsela & a good place to start, check out my resource here to help you get started.

If you check out Newsela, let me know what you think!

- Hilary @ MrsTech

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