Thursday, September 24, 2015

Grammar 101 and Newsela

Last week we started two new web-based programs.  The first is Newsela -- which stands for News in English Language Arts.  I am really excited to be a part of piloting this program for PPS.   Newsela takes current articles from a variety of different, national newspapers and then rewrites those articles at a variety of reading (lexile) levels.  The events and articles are current, interesting, and cover a wide range of areas: war and peace, science, law, health, kids, money, arts, and sports.  Students can self-select the reading level they are comfortable with and at the end of each article there is a comprehension quiz and a writing prompt based on one of the Common Core standards.  It is a great way to focus on improving reading comprehension, annotation, and analysis, while also being engaging for students.

Check Newsela out here: https://newsela.com/

Grammar 101 is also an online program.  It allows individual students to focus their practice on the areas of each section at their own pace.  If a student does well on the pre-test, then that student does not need to complete all of the review exercises for the post-test.

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