(& How to Determine a Student’s Reading Level When You Need To) 

By Joetta M. Schneider, NBCT

This post blends two big ideas: the benefits of using Newsela as one method to differentiate instruction, and how to determine your students’ Lexile^® Reading Levels if you can’t readily find that information.  

What is Newsela?

Newsela is a self-described “Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.”

The teachers I am working with would like to know their students’ reading levels before they take on the task of integrating reading into their high school curricula. I’d used Newsela when it first came out and found it almost magical. No, strike that. I found it both exciting and magical to be able to use the same artticle for each child in my classroom seveeral reading levels without having to modify it myself.  Since then, they’ve added features I took some time to learn about.

Newsela provides thousands of articles on topics like science and math, art, health, and world cultures for students which can be adjusted to any of 5 Lexile® Levels.  This is a great tool for teachers who want to differentiate for instruction. 

Like most NBCTs, my mind went back to the National Board certification process. As it has been reprised since 2017, differentiation is especially relevant for teachers pursuing National Board certification as they dig in to the process of Component 2.  Heck, differentiation is important for all teachers; hence the PD on using Newsela in the classroom.

Getting Past a Roadblock to Teaching Reading Across the Curriculum

One of the difficulties faced by teachers at the high school level is knowing each students’ Lexile^® score. Often, the student has not been tested in reading for a number of years.  Other reasons a teacher may not have quick access to a student’s reading level is that she has a hundred or more students and it’s cumbersome to look up all their records in order to conduct a literacy lesson in, say, a science or math class.

Here’s a screenshot from a slide that describes some of the challenges teachers might face when teaching reading across the curriculum. 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/CapCue 2017: Reading Across The Curriculum with Newsela PRO

Although it might be good to know a student’s reading level before starting any kind of reading in the content area, high school teachers often find it difficult to get that information. You can use Newsela without knowing the students’ reading levels because it automatically adjusts the reading level as the child uses the program. but I will get to that in a few minutes.

The good news is that there are ways to approximate student reading levels if you want to in order to help students achieve the learning goals— we can personalize the learning experience for students.

For Teachers Who Want to Know Their Students’ Reading Levels 

• What are Lexile^® Levels?

One way schools determine a student’s reading ability is to give a test called the Scholastic Reading Inventory, or SRI.

This test for determining a student’s Lexile^® score is not free or easily acquired, which might prove problematic for homeschooling parents or teachers who don’t have access to the metric. However, there are some free resources that can be used to quickly approximate their reading levels.

You may have information about a child’s Lexile^® level if it is a part of his school records. Those scores would range from BR (beginning reader) to 1385 (college level.) Although it’s easy to think of the first number of your child’s Lexile® score as the grade level at which she is reading, Lexile cautions that there is much more to the picture than that.

You can find out more about Lexile Levels and how to use them in this article on the Scholastic website.

• The San Diego Quick Reading Level Assessment 

There are other (free) assessments available to teachers but one of the most reliable and the easiest is the San Diego Quick Reading Level Assessment Test, which has been proven to be a good indicator of reading level for parents and teachers without access to the SRI.

You can also find a PDF version of the San Diego Quick Reading Assessment online.

• Vocabulary Tests or Reading Comprehension

Other ways to help your child choose books at his own reading level is to conduct a vocabulary assessment or determine reading comprehension ability—both methods are described in this blog.

• How to Find the Lexile^® Measure of a Book

You can look up the reading level of a book title at the Lexile website, or you can even look for a list of books at your child’s Lexile® level. If you have determined a child’s reading level based on the SDQRLA, you will have to adjust it to a corresponding or similar Lexile® score.

And, to find step by step instructions for determining the readability of web-based text or Word documents, click here.

Using Newsela in the High School Classroom

After signing up for a free Newsela account, you can create classes and add students in a couple of different ways, all found in a QuickGuide on your “classes” page. (Check the drop-down box from the gear icon in the top right corner of the page next to your name.)

Then search for articles you want to have students read. The search fields include topics, grade levels, and reading skills. Go to the article and click, “assign.”  A cool feature of Newsela is that the articles come from a variety of publications, like National Geographic, NASA, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the Associated Press.

When students create accounts and sign in, they will see their assignments, including any instructions you have given at the level of the class as you assign it; they will all begin on grade level. 

However, three types of formative assessments are embedded in the reading process: annotating as they read the text, two-to-three sentence writing prompts, and a 4-question quiz at the end of each article, Newsela gathers the data, analyzes it, and changes the reading levels for future articles each student will read. As you work with students using Newsela, eventually each student will be reading the same articles you have assigned at his or her own reading level.

One drawback: although the program remains adaptive to each student in the free version, your access to the actual data is only available with Newsela Pro, a paid subscription. Without the Pro version, you won’t be able to track a student’s progress past your 30-day free trial.

Newsela for Lessons That Provide Access and Equity for Students

This online learning platform still provides the easiest approach to reading across the curriculum that I’ve seen so far.

Equity, Access, and Equality are different— even if they sound the same. Newsela is one of many ways teachers can work to provide a safe and challenging learning environment for students.  If you haven’t heard of my bias that doing research into the nbpts.org buzzwords will give you a higher probability of passing, then you are hearing it now.

The reason teachers consider National Board certification to be on par with a Master’s or Doctoral degree is because you will learn and grow as you undertake this process. The learning you will do in the context of your own classroom as you work to impact the learning of your students will be real-world and relevant to you. 

Other Newsela Features

One feature I like about Newsela is the option of building text sets of related articles that help your students make real world connections to the content. For example, when I teach plate tectonics, I can go to the pre-made Collections and choose Science; then, Plate Tectonics. I choose articles from that collection to assign to my students and sequence the material in an order that makes sense in our room.

The binder feature in student accounts keeps a record of all the articles they’ve read, assignments and quizzes completed and tracks their reading levels over time. This enables the adaptive feature which automatically adjusts the articles you assign to each student’s individual reading level.

Besides all the other beneficial features of the program-- another feature embedded in Newsela is the use of Power Words.

Power words are vocabulary words built into articles with clickable links to pronunciation and student friendly definitions. At the end of the article, there are practice vocabulary activities. When students look at their binder of work, one option is to view their personal word wall. It’s recommended that students choose Power Word articles each week and build up to 150 Power Words on their wall each year. Power Words are another feature you have to pay for even if you have Newsela Pro.

Did I mention the articles are offered in both English and Spanish translations?

Integrating Newsela Into the Curriculum

Teachers can use Newsela to introduce new topics, to provide context and enrichment to traditional content, or even as a stand-alone resource on specified “reading days.” If you’ve read this far you may wonder if I’m getting paid by Newsela, but I’m not. I’m just very enthusiastic about its potential. Are there other resources for teachers you love these day? I’d love to hear about them.

• Have you used Newsela or other learning platforms like it to differentiate instruction?
• What are your favorite ways to use Newsela?
• What other ways have you used reading across the curriculum? How has it benefitted your students?
• Do you agree that Component 2 requires teachers to differentiate for individual student learning?
• Leave your ideas for NBCT candidates in the comments!

Thank you for reminding us that you’re looking for resources for NBCT renewal! We’ve facilitated renewal for many teachers and several of us have renewed. You can see some free resources on our website, here. 

In this post, I interviewed Elissa Whelchel,  the President of the Harrison County School District “NBCT Facilitators and Friends,” an exemplary support provider organization in West Virginia.  She discusses how the group was organized and the ways in which others might want to begin a support cohort.

Four years ago, leaders at our county Board of Education wanted to place emphasis on increasing the numbers of National Board Certified Teachers as one means to improve the overall quality of education in our school district. 

At that time, there were at least five NBCTs in leadership positions at our Board of Education office, including our Assistant Superintendent.  Support for the National Board process was strong. In addition, our district hired an Instructional Specialist whose job description was “teacher improvement of any kind.” This was Joetta Schneider, an NBCT who decided that the National Board Certification process was a great platform for all teacher improvement efforts.

In 2014, when the process was still being revised, our state held training sessions and Joetta asked Jenny and I if we would attend with her.  We learned all we could about the new process because we wanted to make sure we were advising candidates correctly. From that time on,  we aligned ourselves with the mission and goals of the state National Board leadership. There were NBCTs from two other counties in our state with successful networks who offered us all their information as we began our support program— both Ohio and Wood County. This is how we became a cohort associated with the NBCT leadership in our state.

We designed our network with two distinct groups that served two distinct functions: the Board of Education would provide professional development,  and the non-profit support group would function to honor NBCTs, and provide support in the form of mentoring and reading for candidates.

When forming a support network of NBCTs in our county, we automatically included all NBCTs in our county in this network and provided training in ethical mentoring for any who wanted to participate in reading for candidates or any form of mentoring.* Each NBCT who wanted to be involved had to attend training and sign an ethical mentoring form.  So we had this very loosely formed group that we included via email and word of mouth, which was very successful.  We called this group the NBCT Network Group. At that time the network was mostly an information and communication disseminating body, which later became a non-profit, Harrison County NBCT Facilitators and Friends.

I was chosen to be the President of the network, with Jenny Santilli the Vice-President;  Joetta was the Director of the network, with the duty of liaising with the County Board of Education.  Connie Bowers, Treasurer and Dinner Chairperson, had moved back to our county after being in Wood County (our inspiration for starting the tradition of a yearly celebratory dinner.) 

We had a learning curve that was hampered by the fact that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was putting out the components one at a time rather than all at once. The entire process was not completed until November of 2017.  This kept us on our toes, learning alongside our candidates.

We learned from Ohio County, who used a “blind reader” program that allowed the readers and candidates a comfortable anonymity. When we tried that, it was well-received and we have kept it as a part of our program. Our program was the first of those in our state that I know of to have a dedicated blog for our candidates.

We had our first Spring recognition dinner in April of 2015, when we honored the first NBCT renewal in our county as well as a teacher who certified under the old system. We invited the Superintendent of our school district and key people in our district with the school board, as well as the Principals of our new candidates. 

At the dinner we presented our candidates with personalized gifts. One of the members of our Board of Education gave a heartwarming speech about his mom becoming the first National Board Certified Teacher in the county, and she, in turn was the Keynote Speaker. So in a neat turn of events, this first-ever recognition and celebration dinner was attended and entertained by an inspiring speech by the first-ever teacher to certify as an NBCT in our county! The evening was a huge success and we decided to make this a yearly event.  Our network has provided funds for the dinner, which cannot be funded by money from our school system.

Our process at a glance: we sought out support from NBCT leadership at the state level, we aligned ourselves with them and provided ethical mentoring training for any NBCTs interested in helping to facilitate or mentor candidates; we designed monthly cohort meetings with good instruction in pedagogy, and we kept all of the county NBCTs informed of opportunities to be involved. We instituted a “Blind Reader” program, and then implemented a celebration dinner for all county NBCTs.  In the Fall of 2017, we added an afternoon get-together at a local eatery.  NBCTs came to enjoy a time to socialize with coffee, cookies, and tea—and to meet with new candidates, and found ways to make money to fund both the Fall Social and the dinner.

As I think about this, I realize that I’m hoping to prompt those reading this blog to reach out to others in their state and support both new and existing NBCTs.  It’s been rewarding for me, as the President of the Harrison County NBCT Friends and Facilitators to see how these efforts have helped our program for National Board teachers in Harrison County to grow and bloom!

*note—the cohort support from our Board of Education is formally a facilitation process; the organic, individual interactions that spring up between NBCTs and candidates is what we call mentoring.