Newsela is a great resource for any classroom. It is a site that has a collection of nonfiction articles and stories, including current events articles, that allow you to select the reading level you need to understand the text. There are usually 5 levels available for students so they can select the level that best suites them, or work on a level that is within their zone of proximal development so that they can continue to learn and improve. There is even a feature, not available for all articles but for many, that gives you a chance to take a quiz that will assess how well you understood the article.
Newsela is free, although there are some paid options, and allows you to easily create teacher and student accounts using your Google Apps log-in. The Pro account gives you more of the LMS features that many would like but that are not needed for most applications of this tool. In the free account you can assign articles to students and they can take the quizzes after certain articles, however the teacher will not be able to see their results.
Newsela provides some great supports for teachers, including a handy sheet telling you how to easily get students registeredand a quick start guide for teachers for the overall process of using it. Newsela is used by a good amount of teachers at our school and they use it in a variety of ways, from giving students options on what they want to read to using them for alouds in the classroom. The ability for students to be able to select their own reading levels means that they can find one that they are comfortable with but also they can try out higher levels to challenge themselves as they learn and improve.
Watch the video below to get started.
Donovanscience 