The Article of the Week - Newsela

When I read Kelly Gallagher's Readicide, I saw the value of the Article of the Week. Kids read a news article and reflect on the content. It is a way to build background knowledge while practicing writing skills. Since I read the book, I have adopted an Article of the Week into our classroom. Kids have read about circuses, presidents, sports, technology and lots of current events. The kids become better-informed and can also construct an argumentative paragraph or essay about the article.

I have used Junior Scholastic in the past for our news articles but this year, I have gravitated toward Newsela. Newsela is an easy-to-use news source that has many great features. One big win for kids is that Newsela allows students to adjust the reading level of the article. Press a button and the article becomes easier or more difficult to read (lexile levels range from 1120+ to 540). This is especially helpful with students whose first language is not English. Newsela is free to use and teachers can set up classes, share the class code with students, and assign articles. Within the Newsela site, teachers can assign quizzes and other reading checks. I prefer to have my kiddos read the articles and then write about them. Too many times I have seen kids look at the questions and then search for the answers in the text. When they write, they have to finish the article to get the information and form their opinions.

One of the great features of Newsela is the ease with which teachers can assign articles. We can assign within the Newsela site itself or share out to Google Classroom, email, Twitter and a few other venues. The ease with which teachers and students can access the news articles is astounding. The ease with which we teachers can use free, current, relevant news articles to build kids' background knowledge is a win for all of us. The Article of the Week is a bedrock element of our class. It serves the purpose of introducing kids to nonfiction articles and gives us more material about which to write. Using Newsela as our current events source is free and easy.