Teacher Highlight: Margot Parker
While Margot is the most full-time part-time counselor we've ever met (you read that right), she also wears many other hats, including a teacher hat! She always goes above and beyond (in typical CMS fashion). Margot teaches an academy FLEX, which is focused on improving reading skills aligned with CCSS. As we are all well aware, there is often a challenge in promoting active learning and engagement when students have not found themselves academically successful in the past. Margot recognized this with her FLEX students, and sought to include resources that would not only meet her students' academic needs, but that would promote engagement as well.
Newsela Integration Idea:
Margot uses Newsela to locate articles that she thinks her students will find engaging. Recent choices have included articles on Snap Chat, U.S. Border debates, and making middle school lunch rooms more friendly. She previews the article to make sure that it is socially relevant to her students. With topics around science, health, social sciences and more, Newsela is not just for ELA teachers. Margot then ensures that the lexile level is set so that the article will push her students just enough to build their reading skills. She assigns associated quizzes so the students can immediately see what they understood or misunderstood in the article.
How To...
Newsela is a tool you can use whether you have a class set of technology, or whether you only have a teacher computer.
- Go to newsela.com
- Click "sign up" to create a Newsela account.
- When viewing articles, you will see a navigation bar on the right-hand side where you can choose the lexile level.
- After you've chosen your desired lexile level, select the printer icon below the lexile list.
- You can try the Pro version for free for 30 days, which will allow you to track quizzes, annotate PDF's, and many other wonderful things. That being said, there are work-arounds if you use the good ol' free version, such as using Notability to annotate PDF's and Google Forms to assign quizzes.
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*Contest alert* A prize will go to the first two teachers who email me, or post as a comment, 3-5 sentences on how they have used Newsela in their classroom! Let me know if you would like any support in using this tool. Margot certainly got me excited to explore it further!
I used NewsELA for Socratic seminar in my AVID class. With the help of Xyzzy I was able to look up all my students Lexile levels (reading level). I printed the same article about educating girls in other countries at different reading levels. Students were given an article that was just above their Lexile level and worked in groups with students who had the same leveled article. They recorded the gist and then cam up with 2 level 2-3 question for the seminar. The next day they had to partner up with someone with a different version of the article. This gave them time to consult with either a stronger or weaker reader. They discussed the article and shared their questions. Then one person from each pair went into the center for the Socratic seminar to discuss. After some time they switched places and continued the discussion. In the end, each student wrote a paragraph about what they saw was the major issue brought up in the article, how this could be solved and any lingering questions they had. They also included a summary of the article in their paragraph. It was amazing how focused they were while the writing.
ReplyDeleteTerri Hughes
Thank you Terri for sharing your extensive knowledge! What a fantastic way to integrate Newsela and AVID strategies! I especially love how you individualized the Lexile level. You are definitely a winner of the contest; see me today for your prize. Can't wait to get you on Teacher Tech Highlights soon! :)
DeleteAnother cool feature: Use the search tool (magnifying glass) in the upper right corner. Click on the heading "Reading Standards" to select the type of articles you want.
ReplyDeleteFor example, select Argument and Opinion (getting our students ready for the next Writing Performance Task) and all the articles with a Pro and Con format will appear. Follow with a close reading and a rich discussion based on evidence from the text!
We have our winners! Please continue to share your thoughts and experience with Newsela. Thank you Xyzzy for sharing your expertise and for these awesome implementation ideas! See me for your techie prize!
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