NEWSELA

NEWSELA is a great resource to bring present day news, issues, controversies, and events into the classroom. Students are excited to learn about what is happening currently in society. Some students may have saw the topic on the news, heard their parents discussing a worldly issue, or experienced an event first hand. Talking about these topics allows learning to become interesting.

In class, we have been discussing articles that classmates have found on NEWSELA. These articles consist of important issues that should be analyzed and discussed. Our role as students is to read the articles, fill in a chart, answer questions, and lead a class discussion. Many of the articles assigned remind us of previous knowledge discussed during field work. Our field work theme was "every day is earth day". One aspect we concentrated on during that time was water pollution.  While reading an article about Flint, a town suffering illness from drinking the tap water, we can recall the information we previously learned about water pollution.

Aside from current events, an article can remind us of a past event. For example, test scores have always been the big deciding factor on how to rate schools. If the children preform well, that must mean the teachers are good, if the teachers are good then the school must be good. The newest trending article on NEWSELA says, maybe not. "New ways to rate schools' success; it's not just the test scores anymore", claims that how schools serve their students is vital when evaluating how good a school is. Students health, safety, a welcoming environment, student readiness, physical fitness, and wealth can all impact student performance and school quality.

As an instructor, you can even assign NEWSELA articles to your class online.