Community reviews for Newsela

If your district can afford the price, this is an excellent resource. During my brief PRO trial, I was able to coordinate articles for cross-curricular content and track student progress.

As an ESL teacher, Newsela facilitates differentiation among ELLs as it enables readers to adjust Lexile level. Some stories are even in Spanish which is good for native Spanish speakers to use as needed. My only caution to teachers is to ensure that students are dumbing themselves down by lowering the reading level instead of challenging themselves. Lower Lexile levels and Spanish texts should be used as a scaffold, to help students reach new heights, not as a crutch. I recommend Newsela be used as a literacy component to be used in together with other tools and strategies, not in isolation.

This is a great tool for finding relevant, current events articles that can enrich existing units. They require little prep and can be used quickly. They are great for enrichment and for independent work, but they aren't full lessons and I wouldn't use them in lieu of a lesson.

Teachers can assign the same content to each student in a class, differentiating for reading level, but allowing all students the ability to discuss the same information. There are quizzes for each article that are aligned with Common Core standards as well as writing prompts. Even though ELA is part of the title, this is a program that can work for every teacher of every subject. One of the best programs for helping kids practice the kinds of skills that are part of the Common Core, Newsela has two options for most teachers, the free and the pro. The free portion of Newsela is fairly robust; the pro version offers significant and worthwhile options that allow both teachers and students to annotate articles and interact with each other’s comments. It also allows teachers to customize writing prompts. At my school, we are fortunate to have the pro version, but we are still learning the many features. However, for all schools, I think the number one feature that the pro version offers is data. Teachers can view individual student progress and whole class progress. Most impressive is that fact that administrators can see schoolwide (and districtwide) data. As we are looking for ways to compile and access data to improve instruction, Newsela is a gold mine.

Overall, I love NewsELA. The ease with which articles are found and differentiated by Lexile levels makes differentiation within a large class so much faster. The assessment questions are not always the best, and I have had many reports from teachers that when assigning articles for students to read at home, they are frequently finding that students are simply "Google-ing" the answers instead of actually reading the article and finding the answers themselves. Regardless, NewsELA provides a valuable resource for use within a classroom with multiple levels of readers. Just use it with caution if you assign the article to read at home!

I love this tool and have taught our reading department, our MS English Department, and our elementary teachers how to use it in their classrooms. I can't think of something that can make reading non-fiction more simple ... and the best part? EVERY kid can discuss the same topic because they all read the same article!

I love Newsela because it allows you to choose different levels of difficulty for the same article. For example, for an article on baseball in the Dominican Republic, I was able to provide a simplified English version to my non-native speaker and a more advanced (higher level vocab, increased word count) version to the rest of my class. The vocabulary used is totally accessible for students of all levels and the content is addressed in a concise, but comphrehensive manner. I can see this being useful for not only language teachers, but for any teacher that wants students to read current events, but has trouble finding leveled material that students can comprehend. Newsela is wonderful!

Newsela is a fantastic tool to use in both an elementary and middle school setting. It's one of my all time favorite tech tools to use in the classroom. I've used the free version more than the paid version and have experienced success with both. My students respond well to Newsela and like the challenges they provide. Students of all different reading levels have responded well to this program. Some enjoy that it allows them to read on the computer, some like the interesting article topics, and some like seeing their Lexile improve over time. The only critique I would give Newsela is that all of the different features may not be available when using Newsela on a tablet or other device. In my opinion, it's best to use Newsela when working on a computer.

I LOVE this product. It has made my students love reading non-fiction texts and keeps them up-to-date with current events. The students every day ask to read additional articles that I didn't assign them. I also have found students researching articles on topics we are discussing in class to further their understanding.

The interface of Newsela is very easy to use. Teachers can pickup the tool and use it effectively almost immediately. Students are able to sit down and begin to read their selection, tailored to their skill level, and obtain the same information from the text as everyone else in the class reading. Newsela made it so easy to differentiate informational texts for students that it became the go-to tool for myself and several of the teachers that I worked with.