Good tool for differentiation

My Take

Overall, I think this is a great tool for differentiation. I teach intervention-level English and ELD, and I teach them how to find the lexile that works for them. Then I have them do a first read at the reading level that challenges them without being over their heads, and we discuss the main ideas in the article. I can then do a class second-read with the original text projected and I can work through key ideas while students look at the text of their reading level on their screen.

It would be nice if there were some expanded functions that were particular to using articles in the classroom. Quizzes are great when they are available, but they are one of the few "student-centered" functions that put the ELA in NewsELA. It would benefit from the addition of some functions that we as teachers already do when we teach news articles - preidentification of challenging vocabulary (with perhaps a click-out or a mouse-over definition), or an annotation feature.