Using Newsela to Improve Student Writing
Materials Needed:
- Access to Newsela website (free version)
- Overhead projector, doc cam, or projection of teacher computer
- Copies of articles for student use
- Different color highlighters (pink and yellow)
Techniques:
There are numerous options for how to structure this lesson depending upon your personal preference or classroom needs.
- Begin with explicit instruction on diction and sentence/paragraph combining options. See attached power points on analysis and diction.
- Newsela is a website that takes high-interest articles and adjusts the lexile score for accessibility. The purpose of the site (according to the site) is to enable students to: “Read closely. Think critically. Be worldly. Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant: daily news. It's easy and amazing. Register now to see the impact Newsela can have on your classroom. (It has) Articles that Inform and Intrigue. Newsela is free for students to explore a world of nonfiction and test their comprehension. Updated daily with real-world news from major publications, students can participate in conversation about the most urgent topics of our time, all while becoming stronger readers.Every Article at 5 Levels. Newsela makes it easy for an entire class to read the same content, but at a level that’s just right for each student.” It is available at While the site offers a great way to differentiate instruction by adjusting reading levels, I use it as a discussion of style and revision options for student writing.
- Select a Newsela article. This can be teacher-choice or student choice, but either way the article should be available in two significantly different L (lexile) scores. Have students work with a partner to highlight the differences between the two articles focusing on sentence combining (pink highlighter) and diction options (yellow highlighter).
- Have a whole-class discussion regarding the differences between the two articles.
- Have students do a quick-write/exit ticket to indicate which article was better and why. They should use specific examples from the text and domain-specific words such as “article 2 used a mixture of simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentenceswhile article 1 used mostly simple sentences with only two compound sentences and one complex sentence.”
- Based on these tickets the teacher will discuss the results the next day and come up with a list of elements that were viewed favorably by the readers (e.g. varied verbs, varied sentence types, better transitions, more specific nouns, etc.)
- Armed with a manageable lists of elements of the “better” article, students are given a new article at a low lexile. Working alone or with a partner, students are to “rewrite” the article incorporating the agreed-upon revisions (see examples above). This will work best if all students have the same article.
- Student volunteers will share with the class their “rewrite” using a doc cam and discuss the elements/choices utilized. The teacher could also do a “rewrite” so students can see other options.
- Show students the highest lexile rewrite of the article from Newsela for comparison discussion.
- As a follow-up students should use the specific agreed-upon revisions in an original writing assignment.