NEWSELA

Parents and teachers often want to given their students learning about the world around them, but also  want to shelter them from adult content.  For teachers, Common Core State Standards also dictate when they need to introduce informative texts to students (starting in 1st grade). It is thus important to have an option that is reliable and age appropriate. In the school we work in, we use the resource Newsela.com.

What is Newsela? 

According to their Website, "Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant: daily news." Newsela is free for students to explore a world of nonfiction and test their comprehension.  As well, texts are presented at 5 different reading levels and are updated daily. 

How We Use Newsela:

We use Newsela to increase interest in nonfiction text and to have our students understand how to summarize main idea and details from news stories. Here is our daily checklist from in speech today:

We often have our students underline or highlight key points for retell. Other times students are not allowed to write on the text so we teach our students another way, the hand method. By simply holding out their fingers our students are able to summarize informational texts by remembering the wh- questions on the tips of their fingers?

Like this :

This strategy helps with retelling information verbally or to double check work in a summarized paragraph.