All Hail Newsela!

Dana gave us a link several weeks back to Newsela.com, an online website designed for news articles and current events. If you have not yet checked out this website, please do so immediately! Since receiving the link and exploring the site further, I have integrated the use of the site into my non-fiction intervention class for those students who struggle with pulling main ideas and details from non-fiction literature. As a "unit", students have read several articles, filled in graphic organizers, and taken online quizzes all using the tools provided within this extraordinary site.

Here's what I have done and what you could do with Newsela:

If you are familiar with Edmodo, it works in a similar way. You can create a group, give your students a group code, and every article you assign will go straight to their account. Unlike Edmodo, you have access to all of their usernames and passwords, and the articles that you assign are sorted by content. "Kids" has been what I've used, but other articles on politics, war, business, etc are easily appropriate for a high school level. Once you find a fitting article, you can "assign" it to the group you've created and students will promptly find it stored in their "Binders".

One of the best parts: Once a student has clicked on the article to read it, they get to choose the level at which they are comfortable reading. Same content and ideas, but either more challenging or more simplified word choice and organization - and all they have to do is click! (Awesome, right?)

Some articles have quizzes attached. With PARCC coming up next year, these quizzes closely mirror the test as it is a mix of multiple choice and interacting with the text electronically. Also, as students are reading, they can highlight main ideas and the site remembers those moments, automatically saving it and indicating the highlight.

I have then used the pre-writing GO graphic organizer from the IW website, asking students to take the article, fill in the main idea, supporting ideas, and quotes from the text to help for proof, lastly followed by completing the quiz attached to the article.

It takes some getting used to, but not long. Check it out and let me know what you think and/or what questions you may have!

The Case Against Cursive

Received this from my mom, a successful IT consultant who (back in "the day") taught computer science:

Just curious. Doses your school teach both cursive and keyboard or did keyboard skills replace cursive? What is the impact as kids get older?

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-17/the-case-against-cursive.html

After that, there was a conversation in our ELA department where I learned that, apparently, some elementary schools have discontinued teaching cursive. I was shocked. The natural response to writing lettings is curved and connected. The act of writing straight lines and spacing is something that is "taught," so I always thought cursive was a valuable skill to hang onto. In retrospect, I know that I neither require nor prevent my own students from writing in cursive, because so much of the final product is typed anyways.

Is cursive obsolete?
Is the act of writing, handwriting, and any other form of the written word on it's way out?
What did happen to keyboarding? When do kids learn that?
Furthermore, the new PARCC tests are ALL online, even the "writing" - not that we teach to the test, but if we are preparing students for it, how do we continue to make writing (cursive or otherwise) relevant?