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ES Library: Newsela

Getting Started

Teachers and students get unlimited access to more than 20 genres of content at 5 reading levels, standards-aligned reading activities, and real-time insights to support core instruction and differentiation across the curriculum.
Take these steps to begin your Newsela rollout:  

Staff/student Sign in

If you're having trouble signing into Newsela please make sure you're signing into the right place - you must sign in using the TOP box that says "Sign in with Clever" it will then take you to your email and password you use for O365.

Microsoft sign in Newsela

To join a class that a teacher created within Newsela, follow these steps:

  • Ask your teacher for the Class Link or the Class Code.They can find this on their Newsela settings page under the Classes tab. 
  • Join the class with the Class Link or the Class Code. Follow the steps below for the one you are using. As you sign in, you'll see an option to Sign in with Microsoft

Class Link: Go to the Class Link. By following the on-screen instructions to sign in, join the class.

Class Code: Go to newsela.com. On the left side, you will see a line that says “Student? Enter class code.” Enter the Class Code and click the arrow. By following the on-screen instructions to sign in, join the class

Please do NOT make up your own password or sign into the bottom part.
This will create endless problems with sign-in and passwords. 

Annotation with Newseala

Taking Action in Science

Have you ever watched a Ted Talk or read an article on Newsela and have been inspired to pursue a passion project or a call to action? As teachers, we tend to love the idea of having our students engage in passion projects but are uncertain of how to fit it into our curriculum, what resources to use, or if it even aligns with our mandated standards! This webinar will not only explore how can teachers can use Newsela to as a tool to spark student action in Science but also illustrate ideas and resources supported by NGSS that can be used directly with students.

Reading Skills

Reading Skills Checks
Available under Collection > Reading Skills Checks, these are a good first step in creating an assignment for students. We recommend that educators assign 3 of the articles at any given time, to give them more insight into how students are performing against several reading skills. These articles are only available at one grade level, so we recommend that educators assign the same-grade-level article.

newsela reading skillsNewsela provides insights per student on their reading.  In addition reading skills are assessed along 8 dimensions:

  • What the text says
  • Main idea, key details & summarization
  • Connecting people, events and ideas
  • Word meaning and choice
  • Text Structure
  • Point of view and purpose
  • Interpreting multimedia
  • Arguments and claims

Students can then work on skills that need growth. It's also a good bridge between the MAP testing sessions

Text Sets

Looking for specific topics:
So you'll see a lot of recommendations are Text Sets. These are nice places to start because they usually have been pre-curated.
 
Filtering
As I reminder, from the Search page, you can always use "More Filters" to filter by publication source. Agence France Presse, Al Jazeera, the Guardian are some of those.
 
 
Additional professional learning
Newsela Certified Educator is available on the Educator Center: https://learn.newsela.com/newsela-certified-educators.
 
Teach with Newsela
If you type in SEL into the Searchbar in the Educator Center, you'll find a variety of webinars and resources on the Social Emotional Learning Collection.
 
Assigning Articles or Text Sets
When teachers create Assignments, they can also add additional links to the instructions. This allows you to send your students to other websites.

Collaborating on a Text Set
An individual text set can only be edited by a single user; we don't have a collaborative creation feature at this point. As a workaround, I would recommend the following:
Create a shared document (either in google docs, or even an email thread) where you discuss the articles you think would be best for each resolution.
Come to a consensus about which articles will support each resolution, in the shared document/email chain.
Appoint a single teacher to build each text set, indicating in the description any relevant information about the resolution and supporting articles.

Sharing Text Sets with Colleagues
Text sets are always shareable, and editable, by teachers. 
Share the links of the text sets with the rest of the teachers in your school, or direct them to find the text sets in "Text Sets at Your School." The text set will be available to them all to assign to their students. You can use either the "share" icon beneath the text set title or directly link the url. Please note: teachers will be able to make their own copy to edit. 
When you share your links with other educators, include a note on why they should assign these text sets as is. You might include more information on how to create an assignment for those teachers who may need some support using this support page. 

Word Choice