🆕 Enhancement releases

We've been busy! Here's a sneak peek at Newsela's January-February, 2025 new features and improvements:

Premium Teacher Onboarding Flow: The Onboarding Checklist

A pop-up on the homepage that lists a series of actions designed to get a new teacher in Newsela set up for success:

• Setting up their classes

• Searching for their first topic

• Viewing at least 3 articles

• Creating their first assignment

• Grading and reviewing student work

• Visiting Newsela at least 5 days

  

New Citations Feature

We’re excited to roll out a new citations feature that allows students to generate citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago Manual of Style formats. This will appear as a new button on the article, giving students an easy way to create properly formatted citations directly from their assignment.

Enhanced algorithm to recommended articles for students

We enhanced our algorithm that recommends the reading level of texts to students. Article recommendations are based on all available performance data, including:

• NWEA/MAP scores (if available)

• Prior quizzes interactions

• Checks for Understanding interactions

• Guided Highlighting interactions

• Student’s academic grade level (from rostering)

Teacher engagement with Checks For Understanding when previewing as student

Previously, teachers using "View as Student" to preview an article on the View Page couldn't engage with the CFU activities in that preview. As a result, they couldn't actually preview the full article -- or demonstrate the CFU feature to students. Now, teachers using the "View as Student" preview can engage with the CFUs and complete them just like a student.

💟 Newsela Writing

The below features have been added to Newsela Writing:

Copy/Paste Alert

Once a student submits their work, Newsela Writing will evaluate which text, if any, has been copy-pasted into the student’s essay. Teachers will immediately see the “Copy-Paste Monitor” information in their Assignment Report displayed as a percentage of the text that was copy-pasted. Learn more here.

📚Content Updates

Newsela content is updated on a regular basis. During this time period the following content updates were introduced:

Bookworms Curriculum Complement for Newsela ELA

The Bookworms curriculum is one of six K-5 programs recognized by the Knowledge Matters Campaign for its proven alignment with the Science of Reading and its focus on building essential knowledge. Widely adopted in key ELA states like Virginia, it is trusted by educators for driving student success in literacy.Each module includes multiple text sets that offer clear opportunities to deepen students’ understanding of the curricular content (e.g., building background knowledge, making topical connections, etc.) and support priority skill development. Intended use for lower and upper elementary vary. The lower elementary experience is designed to be utilized as a whole class read-aloud. Additionally, Lesson Sparks are included for upper elementary teachers offering strategies to support learning for multilingual learners.

New Novel Studies Now Available in Newsela ELA: We now offer over 500 novels!

The Newsela Novel and Book Studies collection now has 20 additional titles, bringing our total up to 500+. Highlights: Brave New World or When Stars Are Scattered

🛠️ Fixes

Every technological tool runs into hiccups here and there. If you run into any technical issues please submit a report to our team so we could go ahead and fix it!

🐞 Bugs

The below bugs were resolved throughout the month

• Site latency in Newsela Writing

• Quiz scores not loading in Newsela