https://newsela.com/ While we have heard about Newsela before, I'm going to give it another plug here. At Newsela, students can find news articles that come from many different respectable and reliable sources such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, and many others. By reading extensively from such reliable sources, students can learn to recognize high-quality information. Students can also learn to cross-reference information by finding articles on the same topic across different sources and comparing it for quality and accuracy. To help students with this text sets on numerous topics are available. Text sets also make it possible for students to synthesize learning across from different sources. Additionally, because some of these sources (The Guardian, for example) are non-US-based publications, students are given multiple cultural perspectives which can encourage them to look at a topic from multiple points of view. I have used Newsela articles as topics for discussion, lessons on informational writing and text structures, and for research purposes. Another source I would like to mention is Commonlit (https://www.commonlit.org/). Commonlit is an excellent resource for grade-level appropriate readings in many different genres. What I like about this site is the additional resources it offers over and above the texts and text-generated comprehension and discussion questions it provides. Many of the texts provided whether it is a poem, short story, speech, memoir, or informational article include paired texts on related topics, related media, as well as teacher and parent guides. For instance, the poem Turn, Turn, My Wheel by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is accompanied by a video on about the making of pottery and the use of the pottery wheel, while the paired texts explore the life of Longfellow and the juxtaposition of rigid scientific principles (such as the rotation of the planets) and the unpredictability of life and human fate. I particularly like the way fiction and nonfiction are often paired and how unexpected the pairings sometimes seem at first. I think this is important for kids so that they can start to see how inter-connected of our world.
started by jenilb on 20 Jun 17
While we have heard about Newsela before, I'm going to give it another plug here. At Newsela, students can find news articles that come from many different respectable and reliable sources such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, and many others. By reading extensively from such reliable sources, students can learn to recognize high-quality information. Students can also learn to cross-reference information by finding articles on the same topic across different sources and comparing it for quality and accuracy. To help students with this text sets on numerous topics are available. Text sets also make it possible for students to synthesize learning across from different sources. Additionally, because some of these sources (The Guardian, for example) are non-US-based publications, students are given multiple cultural perspectives which can encourage them to look at a topic from multiple points of view. I have used Newsela articles as topics for discussion, lessons on informational writing and text structures, and for research purposes.
Another source I would like to mention is Commonlit (https://www.commonlit.org/). Commonlit is an excellent resource for grade-level appropriate readings in many different genres. What I like about this site is the additional resources it offers over and above the texts and text-generated comprehension and discussion questions it provides. Many of the texts provided whether it is a poem, short story, speech, memoir, or informational article include paired texts on related topics, related media, as well as teacher and parent guides. For instance, the poem Turn, Turn, My Wheel by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is accompanied by a video on about the making of pottery and the use of the pottery wheel, while the paired texts explore the life of Longfellow and the juxtaposition of rigid scientific principles (such as the rotation of the planets) and the unpredictability of life and human fate. I particularly like the way fiction and nonfiction are often paired and how unexpected the pairings sometimes seem at first. I think this is important for kids so that they can start to see how inter-connected of our world.