Newsela is an App (free on the Appstore) which features lots of news for children. There are loads of great options and activities which make it excellent for guided reading sessions.
How do you use Newsela?
First open up the App and you get to the home page. It has loads of large images and a brief sentence summarising each article – great for children to choose things that interest them.
If you want to filter the news by category just click in the top right corner and you get to this page where you can choose your topic:
Instead of sorting by category, you can click on the magnifying glass at the bottom of the main page and search. I tried a search for Minecraft which my students love!
If you find an article you like, click the title to open the article. The news is all child-friendly and certainly engages my students.
A really effective tool is that you can simplify or make the text more complex. Simply click on the light bulb at the foot of the screen and choose which reading level you want:
In a typical Newsela guided reading session, I ask the children to read an article and then take the quiz or activity at the end of the article. It tests different skills; especially comprehension.
How about assigning different reading groups to different Newsela text levels?
Finally, you can easily share articles, placing them on class management Apps such as Google Classroom. Simply hit the button in the lower right corner:
Have a look at my video tutorial for Newsela:
What do you think of Newsela? Comment below.
EDTECH 4 BEGINNERS 