Newsela Has Come to AISL!

We are very excited this year to have added an outstanding new educational resource to our suite of virtual library offerings. One of our new products is a current events-based learning platform called Newsela. There is a free version of Newsela, but our school has subscribed to Newsela Pro, which allows teachers to assign articles to students with the teacher's own embedded questions & activities and allows teachers to more readily track student progress and learning using this platform. Students can also check their own reading comprehension after they've read an article. 

Newsela is an incredible resource for a number of reasons. One of the factors that makes it a powerful differentiation tool is that a student can select from 5 different lexile levels (with one click!) to make the text easier or more challenging to read. This is a useful feature for all our students but can be especially helpful for additional language learners or students with specific learning support needs. Another attractive aspect is that the articles are chosen daily by Newsela staff from a wide range of reputable news outlets with an eye for student appeal. Newsela also has current events articles grouped around important issues, such as the migrant crisis, global warming, technology & innovation, climate change, and more. Many of the articles are also available in Spanish.

In the secondary school Ms. Maguire (Secondary Teacher-Librarian) has been meeting with individual teachers and classes to help them get set up with this new resource. These sessions will continue across the next few weeks.  

We encourage our students to follow current events regularly as a way to stay engaged with the world around them. For additional current events resources, we also have a secondary current events libguide (with a middle school & high school page). The password is the same as for the parent portal & virtual library. If you need to know what it is, please ask your child as they know, too (or see any member of our staff). We also have our New York Times all-digital access package that is used more with upper secondary (grades 9-12) students. 

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