Thank you to those who were able to join Workshop Wednesday to review some new features in Newsela. Today's blog will have some follow-ups to these sessions, including:
- Newsela's 12 Days of Good News Challenge (including Pear Deck support)
- New features to support integration of Newsela with Google Classroom
- The recording of Wednesday Workshop for secondary teachers
- The cross-curricular guide with Newsela text sets for elementary teachers
12 Days of Good News Challenge
I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a challenging year. However, we have all found 'silver lining' moments that include how people have dealt with the pandemic as well as unexpected bright spots.
Newsela has created 12 special text sets that highlight good news from 2020. These text sets each support a theme of news from throughout this past year. In addition, Newsela has partnered with Pear Deck to create Daily Decks that support these text sets with ready-made pre-and post-reading activities. For example, one of the 'good news' articles is "How Bored Families are Getting Through The Coronavirus Lockdown" highlighting a trend called the "Quarantine Olympics".
The support this article, there is a prepared Pear Deck that teachers may use, edit, and add to when assigning and discussing this article with students.
As we move to winter break, we have an opportunity to refocus on the stories from the year that we can truly celebrate. If you would like to join the Newsela Reading Challenge, you may post examples of sharing these resources with students using the #12DaysofGoodNews hashtag, and be sure to add the #sepolk hashtag as well. More information on this reading challenge may be found at the link below.
Newsela and Google Classroom
Teachers can now search, preview and embed Newsela article content while creating assignments on Google Classroom. Students will also be able to access the same search tool to embed content into discussion posts. This update helps Newsela align even better with Google Classroom and can save some steps and 'clicks' for both teachers and students. To add this feature, please follow the steps below:
- Go to the Chrome Web Store to install the Newsela Chrome Browser Extension
- Select Add to Chrome to install the extension
- While creating a Google Classroom instructional activity select the Add/Link option and then the Newsela icon to launch the search experience
- Once you find something for your students, select Add Link to embed the link.
- Note: This process will only assign the selected article on Google Classroom. You will need to also assign the same article on Newsela to view student completion.
Wednesday Workshop Recording
The recording for the secondary Wednesday Workshop that highlighted new features from Newsela may be found at the link below as well as on the Southeast Polk Professional Development site.
Elementary Cross-Curricular Guide
Our representative and partner from Newsela has linked text sets to support our units of study on the K-5 Cross-Curricular guide. These text sets are linked on the document below as well as on the Southeast Polk Professional Development site.
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