What is Newsela? And Why This EdTech Tool Is So Powerful

Newsela first broke into the EdTech scene in 2013 but continues to evolve and spread its mission of making engaging resources accessible to students of various reading levels and backgrounds.

I first used Newsela with my eighth-grade class for students with reading disabilities. Newsela gave me a platform in which I could work on reading skills while discussing interesting topics, like Chance the Rapper (I earned serious street cred that day). The students LOVED being able to independently read about relevant topics at their level rather than use the childish reading materials they were typically given. Needless to say, Newsela had me at hello but continued to evolve and add more features that made their platform even better.

What is Newsela?

At its core, Newsela provides differentiated articles that come with standards-aligned quizzes. Articles are pulled from over 100 reputable sources, including the New York Times and the History Channel. The articles are adapted to 5 different Lexile levels, empowering students to take charge of their learning and adjust the readability levels to maximize their comprehension. Students can choose their own articles or read articles that have been assigned by a teacher.

Logging in

Newsela integrates with all of the big names; Google Classroom, Canvas, Schoology, and many more. Teachers can easily create classes, add co-teachers, assign articles and quizzes, and even customize writing prompts. Newsela has a robust getting started page with easy-to-follow directions and FAQs to solve all of your logging-in problems, should they arise.

Accessibility

Newsela’s commitment to accessibility is the feature that won me over. As a special educator, I would cringe when my students would get printed articles in their general education classes and be expected to independently read (or worse- have to ask an adult to read it to them) and understand the content. Luckily, once I showed my colleagues Newsela, they switched over and I showed the students how to adjust the Lexile level or access the read-aloud feature. Newsela was a GAME CHANGER. We used the articles to practice digital reading skills when they were with me and then they learned Science and Social studies via Newsela in their content classroom. WINNING!

Those Quizzes Though…..

Make no mistake, the Newsela quizzes are rigorous. These challenging assessments offer an opportunity for students to closely analyze text and critically think about the answers. 

Here’s the deal. We all need instruction and practice when it comes to critically analyzing digital content. Our brains have been trained to browse when reading on a screen. Newsela quizzes offer an outstanding opportunity to retrain our brains to deeply think about digital information. If we are going to measure their learning (and our impact) with digital standardized tests, we owe it to our students (and ourselves) to teach students how to apply their reading comprehension skills to digital media.

This Correlational Study really got me thinking. Here’s the key finding, “When students take

Newsela quizzes, they’re getting exposure to the types of questions being asked on high stakes reading assessments. As students improve their scores on Newsela quizzes, they're demonstrating standardized reading growth as well.” These quizzes are valuable instructional tools and could play an important part in helping our students grow their abilities to deeply analyze text.

Difficult quizzes shouldn’t be a deterrent. We can use them to challenge our students to build their reading comprehension skills. Newsela’s embedded annotation tool provides an awesome opportunity as it allows students to highlight text in different colors and make notes. Articles and quizzes can also be printed and used as a whole class instructional activity. Consider shifting your approach from using Newsela as an independent practice activity to a deep-thinking comprehension lesson.

Ready to give Newsela a try? Wait, there’s more! Newsela has recently added some really exciting features!

What’s New With Newsela

Videos

Newsela now offers videos to support student learning. These videos are great for teaching skills as well as for providing content information. For example, in the ELA section, you can find an entire video set to support Poetry instruction. The great thing about these videos is that they are interactive, pausing periodically to use multiple-choice questions to check for understanding. 

Videos are also like fun little treasures found within Instructional Sets. For example, within the virtual Field Trips, videos are included to provide background knowledge, allowing deeper instruction to occur. You can also find stand-alone videos by selecting the videos button in the content types search bar.

Subject Area Content

Newsela has added a ton of articles that can be used to align with content and for building background knowledge. Content area articles are available for ELA, Science, Social Studies, and even Social Emotional Learning. Beyond content area articles, Newsela provides complete lesson plans. These lessons can include lesson objectives, compelling questions, graphic organizers, supplemental articles, and even extension activities. Seriously, these lessons are amazing.

Reading Skills Check

I’m in love with these assessments. They are a great way for Newsela to learn about your students’ reading skills (did I mention Newsela is a learning platform - meaning it will auto-magically adjust Lexile levels for specific students?). These assessments also let you know where your students stand in terms of progress toward mastery of reading standards. Assessments are available starting at the 2nd-grade level and come with 8 comprehension questions (as opposed to the typical 4 questions found with all other articles).

Whether you are new to Newsela or have used it in the past, take a moment to dig into this tool. I’m so impressed with the way they have evolved to better meet the needs of students and educators everywhere. Even if you are just dabbling with the free version, Newsela’s mission of bringing “meaningful classroom learning for every student” is clear. They bring accessible and impactful content to students, which means everything to me.