News ELA

According to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a majority of the reading required in college courses and career readiness programs is informational in structure and complex in content.

TRANSLATION: No matter what their futures hold, today's students are expected to be critical thinkers and proficient readers of non-fiction.

Consequently, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is calling for a steady distribution shift of text structures where students will be reading 70%  informational passages and 30% literary passages by the time they reach 12th grade. And as elementary and middle level teachers continue to make preparation efforts for this movement, a variety of 21st Century educational resources have also emerged. One such resource that has been introduced to 6th grade Language Arts students at West De Pere Middle School is NewsELA.

The framework for NewsELA, a free website available to teachers, students, and parents, is to provide differentiated nonfiction reading opportunities for all abilities. The articles are designed to be individually adaptable to Lexile as students demonstrate their level of proficiency with Common Core-aligned quizzes. Teachers can then increase or decrease the level at which the assignments are shared, making a more advanced or remedial version of the same passage instantly available.

In addition to its academic benefits, the site also offers a variety of topics for students to choose from that appeal to the eager as well as the reluctant reader. This range in content helps to further ensure that NewsELA is a relevant resource proving useful beyond Language Arts and across the curriculum.