All school year I have been emailing my colleagues about the website Newsela.com. When I was introduced to at the beginning of the school I instantly saw how beneficial this tool could be.
Benefits:
- Students reading for comprehension online
- Students can annotate
- Students reading current events
- A class is able to read the same article on different Lexile levels
- Instant feedback quiz after reading
- Teachers can grade and comment on students’ open-ended responses
- No need for emails to create accounts
- Reports come back to the teacher
- Class averages
- Students can be assigned work
- If you are a GAFE school teachers and students can sign in through Google
My colleagues read my emails and listened to me rave about this website but I never saw or heard of anyone using it. Finally I went and created classes for all third and fourth graders. Students read and article and took the quiz in the computer lab. Teachers were thrilled. 7/8 teachers admitted they would now use Newsela in their classrooms. A great of example of how we learn by doing.
What I have learned about Newsela since using it:
- They have great quick-start guides
- Students can be assigned to retake a quiz
- Teachers can sign up for daily “articles of the day” emails (These are great!)
- Pro version- Teachers can download quiz data (put it into Excel/Sheets)
- Pro version- allows you the teacher to see the students’ annotations and vice-versa
- Pro version- Teachers can track student and class progress against Common Core standards
- Pro version- Teachers can sign up for weekly Insights emails
The problem I’ve come across is that students can access all articles. Currently I work with K-4 and some of the articles, specifically in the “War & Peace” section are not appropriate.
Another problem, when I first when to demonstrate how to take a quiz, as a teacher it shows the answers. (The first time doesn’t count, right?)
update March 13: It looks like I wrote about Newsela this time last year too. http://technicallylibrarian.blogspot.com/2014/03/newesla-techie-tuesday-link-up.html