Newsela Essentials

Newsela Essentials, formerly known as Newsela PRO, helps teachers integrate literacy across subject areas with texts that are engaging and accessible to students and relevant to all classrooms. 

Newsela Essentials Features

  • An extensive library of authentic nonfiction, including a variety of current events and news-related texts from the world’s best publications..

  • Leveled texts presented to students at their recommended article level to support differentiation.

  • Multiple choice standards aligned quizzes and customizable write prompts to strengthen student comprehension. 

Content Categories

Under the News topic, teachers and students will find nonfiction content that reflects current issues, real-world events, and recent discoveries or findings. The content is displayed under several categories:

  • Latest News

  • Good News

  • Sports

  • Around the World

  • Money

  • U.S. News

  • Kids & Teens

  • Culture

  • Science & Teachers

  • Health

To explore the content available with your Essentials subscription, follow these steps:

  1. Click 'Content Library' at the top of the page

  2. Select the 'News' topic from the dropdown menu      

  3. Scroll the page down to explore regularly updated rows that highlight latest news and different categories covered, or

  4. Select a category (Sports, Around the World, etc.) from the left-hand navigation to browse the connected content

  5. Click on 'See more' next to each content category row to view all the content associated with it

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Find specific articles across the different News categories by searching for keywords or subjects. To search, follow these steps:

  1. Type a keyword or subject into the Search field on the navigation bar at the top of the page

  2. As you type, Newsela displays a dropdown of suggestions for common key phrases and questions related to your entered keyword(s). You can select a suggestion directly from this dropdown list, or click Enter to be directed to the results page

  3. Use the filters at the top of the display and on the right-side panel to refine your search results for other types of content and aspects of articles, including Language, Content Types, Reading Skills, Article Level, Grade Level, Instructional Features, etc.

  4. To remove all filters select 'Clear Filters'

  5. Use the sort dropdown at the top right corner to re-order the results by most relevant or by most recent

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Find multiple choice quizzes ​​on every text aligned to Common Core Standards for informational text, along with customizable Write prompts​​ to promote important writing and literacy skills, Annotations activities, Checks for Understanding, and even Student Polls. If you have a Formative account, you can also use the Newsela-Formative integration to further enhance the activities on the Formative platform.

  1. Click on an article that meets the needs of an upcoming lesson

  2. From the article page, check-mark the activities you'd like to assign your students from the right-side panel

  3. You can preview all activities, and edit the write prompts and annotations activities by clicking on the "view" or "view/edit" button next to each activity

  4. Clicking on the Formative option will send the article and your selected activities into your Formative account, where you can continue to enhance the lesson / assignment with additional question types and content items.

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Find your saved texts, original text sets, and text sets created at your school in the My Content section of the Content Library menu.

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