Newsela Unveils Units, Vocabulary Instruction, Increased Elementary Content
Newsela,
an instructional content platform, has announced three new features to
be released in the fall of 2017. The announcement was made at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference in San Antonio, TX.
The
new features include Newsela Units, Power Words and Elementary Content.
According to the company, it introduced these features in an effort "to
help bridge the gap between how kids engage with modern digital content
and how they engage with academic technology at school."
Newsela
Units organizes Newsela articles by topic and sequences the articles
within each topic. Each unit includes three sub-topics and a high-level
guiding question. Each sub-topic is further broken down into "PRO Text
Sets," which pair specific articles with classroom-ready teaching
ideas. The first Newsela Units rolling out in fall 2017 will cover
United States History.
Power Words is a vocabulary instruction
feature. Newsela articles highlight high-frequency and high-utility
words and allow students to read child-friendly definitions of those
words as they are used in the article. At the end of each article,
students can practice the words in a series of low-stakes activities.
They can also add words and points to their personal Word Wall, and
teachers can monitor individual and class progress toward goals.
Finally,
Newsela plans to significantly expand its selection of content for
elementary students, bringing the total number of new elementary
articles per day to more than 10.
"We want to go beyond the
textbook and help create an instructional content experience for the
digital classroom era,” said Matthew Gross, founder and CEO of Newsela,
in a prepared statement. “You’re also going to see a lot of new
features layered on the texts themselves, making them more interactive…
all beginning this fall."
Further information about Newsela is available on the company's site.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].