Community reviews for Newsela

I believe that Newsela is a necessary addition for any school district. It adjusts readability levels, quizzes, and writing prompts for all students. It houses data that can be used by teachers for directing instruction. If you have any questions or ideas, the staff always responds positively and in a timely manner. Like stated before, I have no negative critiques at this time.

The best feature of NewsELA are the different reading levels of the same articles. The site serves different students by offering a diverse range of topics at at least five different Lexile levels. Most articles I’ve viewed are excerpts of authentic news stories as I am finding articles and reviewing them with students I feel like I’m getting my daily news as well.

I think that this is a great tool for teachers. If you can find an article that has the topic you are looking for, I would certainly not hesitate to use Newsela. It allows teachers to have all students read right at their reading level so everyone in the class can understand what they are reading. Allowing students to read right at their current level allows for all students to have constructive conversations. It is a great way to differentiate, and Newsela has made the process quick and easy. The set up time will vary, depending on if you would like to have the students access the articles electronically or print them out. If you are printing everything, it should not take you more than five minutes to print out everything you need. If you want students to read the articles electronically, it will take you longer to set up your class. Once the class is set up, though, the process for preparation is quick and easy. The only limitations include the limited topics and articles available and the reading levels that each article is limited to (as they vary by article.)

This website provides up to date news articles daily. The design and format is easy to read and the images that go along with articles make them very appealing to students. Articles are at different reading levels so students can comprehend and remain engaged.

My student population is entirely exceptional learners, specifically those with diagnosed challenges in language. Newsela allows me to choose one article and make it accessible to ALL of my students, regardless of whether they're reading on a 4th grade level or a 10th grade level. Titles, vocabulary, captions, and number of sentences adjust based on the learner's need. There are not many tools with these accessibility features and I (and my students) are grateful for them. Newsela recently added several science-specific text sets which has made searching for appropriate content incredibly easy. Since I began using it, they've also added a writing prompt to many of the current event articles, which has helped me gather data about how well my students are comprehending content heavy reading. The Teacher Dashboard is easy to use and there are suggestions along the way as I assign articles to students. I can sort by reading standard to see my students' performance, I can see accuracy percentages of one student or the whole class in one view. I love that my students are not only accessing these current events at a reading level that makes them confident, but that I am also able to gather specific data about their comprehension abilities. The only way I can think to make this tool better would be to add a quotation feature, where students would be able to highlight main ideas within their reading to directly respond to the text.

This has been an excellent tool from the start and it continues to develop further. I use the professional version, which allows me to gather data to inform instruction and help students to set goals and improve. As with any resource, it's important that it be used thoughtfully in instruction. Students still need explicit instruction on being skilled digital readers, and this tool is perfect to support that. I highly recommend it!

The amount of resources (the above features like varied levels, quizzes, and Spanish language articles) make this website an absolute must for any ELA classroom. Some of the pro features like tracking student/class progress, and assigning articles sounds incredible (but expensive and I don't use it). As a free user I use Edmodo or Google Docs to assign articles and track progress. I've loved seeing the progress this site has made over the years and am excited to see new features added (hopefully to free accounts). I would love to see some social features like comments and highlights (with comments) added in, but there are some risks there, perhaps having classes be able to share comments and highlights just with other classmates in a non-anonymous way.

It is a good tool if you are able to plan a whole lesson around the material. Also good for independent work if you just want students reading about the news and the world.

I believe Newsela is a great teaching tool to use and I have found many benefits to using it in my classroom. One thing I like is that the questions are already created, and they are not simple multiple choice questions, but ones that actually make students have to go back to the text, analyze what they have already read, and then come up with the best possible answer. I also appreciate that teachers can see what grade-level would be best for specific articles. These grade level assignments are based on the Lexile range, and help me when choosing articles for my heterogeneous classes. Students also have access to the app/website, which allows them to search for articles they are interested in. This raises student motivation, and gets them excited to read a current event in something they are actually interested in. The only critique I have for using Newsela is that although it works well with Google Apps, it does not work well with other website types. For example, my school requires me to update Edline with work that is due (even though I also use Google Classroom). Edline is a website that keeps our students and their parents connected to whatever assignments are due and keeps parents aware of their child's current grades. Newsela articles do not easily save as Microsoft Word documents because the formats do not agree. Therefore, taking an article and making it a Microsoft Word document to add in Edline is somewhat of a process. However, I believe the many benefits outweigh this one negative of Newsela, which is why I recommend it for teachers to use as a tool in their classrooms.

Newsela is an effective tool for addressing multiple reading levels in one classroom. It allows all students to be able to effectively participate in class discussions without being singled out by reading level. Primarily, Newsela is substitution for print articles - it doesn't engage the reader in higher level technology applications. Unfortunately, in order to move into the augmentation level of technology, a paid subscription is required. I use Newsela in my classroom quite often and really appreciate the access to a wide variety of current event articles but there are limitations to it's use as a digital tool.