NEWSELA @ EHS-- Update
Our Reading Comprehension Intervention & MORE
M. Junken Wins Cool T-Shirt for Creative Use of Newsela
This week Melissa shared an article with her class about the pros and cons of bottled water. She copied the news article on paper and then cut it up like a jigsaw puzzle. The students re-assembled the articles with tape, matching content sections with their sub-headings. The students had to comprehend the text in order to match it to the appropriate sub-heading. After the hands-on activity, Melissa assigned the quiz to the students plus a related essay assignment that she created.
Melissa finds that her lesson has "kinesthetic" advantages, enabling her lab students to get up and walk around, cut & paste, and manipulate the papers. The students travel to the library to write essays based on the assigned article. Melissa says that Newsela is a great product if teachers encourage connections to the stories and assignments.
Newsela--A closer look
Newsela--As a jigsaw puzzle
Newsela--Support your opinion--WRITE!
Newsela Auto-Features Start When Student Takes 8th Quiz
Newsela developers constantly analyze results and best practices for its new product. Like EHS teachers, they find the biggest strides in students who are low level readers. They recommend assigning two quizzed readings per week. When students read even more unquizzed articles, their performance goes up on the quizzes they take.
Newsela articles serve as discussion and debate starters, enhancing knowledge of current events, higher order thinking skills and language development.
Newselas offers teachers flexibility in changing a prompt and annotating articles to make classroom connections.