Brandon Cruz
ED 638-40
Dr. M. Rivera
IRA Newsletter Project:
Effective Literacy Websites #3
With
the use of more informational texts in the classroom comes the issue with
oversaturation of a specific concept strand between disciplines in the secondary
levels. Resources such as tweentribune.com, by the Smithsonian Learning Lab,
provide high interest news articles categorized by Lexile levels for
kindergarten through twelfth grade. The articles are updated regularly to
remain current and some are available in Spanish. Along with the articles are
videos, lesson plans, newsletters, self-scoring quizzes, critical thinking
questions, and the ability for students to comment and read other student
comments on articles. Best of all, signing up for an account is free. The site
offers resources to support World Studies, Social Sciences, Language Arts and
Literature, History, Art and Music, Math, Technology, and Engineering.
The
articles are aligned with Texas STAAR and Virginia SOL, however, align with some
Common Core State Anchor Standards as well (R.1 – R.10 except R.3, W.1 – W.10,
SL.1 – SL.6, and L.1 – L.6). The site is easy to navigate and searching through
the archives of lessons and articles is quite easy to get used to, however some
of the filters for specific standards return empty queries. Although, the
filters are quite clear and can be combined to find articles that support
multiple standards and topics at once.
One of
the newer additions to the site is the Teacher Store, which to bibliophiles
like me is a wonderful thing to have as a means of filling shelves in your
classroom with interesting and meaningful texts to engage students across
disciplines, or sometimes even create a spark to push students into specific
fields of study in the future. The Smithsonian Science Kits are great for the
classroom or even for parents looking to get their kids Science projects to do
at home.
Ultimately,
the largest boon of the site is the regular updates of material, the support it
grants to cross between disciplines and remain interesting without
oversaturating redundant material to the students. Oh, and the provided resources
are FREE!
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