Using Newsela to Differentiate a Classroom

One of the expectations of every classroom teacher is to differentiate the classroom and create lessons that fit to the needs of each student.   Many teachers who incorporate reading into the classroom are probably finding difficulty managing this concept and struggle to get good, quality articles.   I have come across a way:  Newsela 

Newsela is a collection of nonfiction articles that cover an array of topics.  It is free to use, just create an account.  The exciting part about this website is the ease of differentiation.   Every article has options to choose the lexile level of the text.   What does this mean?  You can print the same article but have different versions so the lower reader can read the same information with simpler text.

The site allows you to establish classes so you can store content relevant stories for later use.  These are saved in binders.  What is awesome about this, it also creates reading comprehension questions for each article as well.

I created a student account and a teacher account so I could see how it worked. It was very easy to establish a class and find articles.  There is even a progress check which identifies student needs.

This is definitely a site to look at and play around with.  Every content area can benefit from the articles and it helps pull that nonfiction need into the classroom.