Middle Level Texts

A guest post by James Moore, the instructional coach at Hunt Middle School. 

If you’re anything like the faculty here at the Hunt Middle School, you’ve been counting down the days until we have Newsela access. I frequently hear: “Do we have it yet?” “What’s the day?” “How do I teach [coordinate planes/index fossils/the Vietnam War] without Newsela?” And when I was most recently asked about Newsela, I said maybe they should ask their coach for alternative sites. 

 Oh - hey - that’s me! Hi! 

Add to this the recent blog post by Nadya about the dos and don’ts of Newsela, and it got me thinking: I’d like to provide folks with places to get middle school appropriate texts to encourage students to read at or above their grade levels. 

An important side note: We can’t ask students to log in to use the resources here (with the exception of the Vermont Online Library) because of federal COPPA rules (Children’s Online Privacy & Protection Act). COPPA  "governs the collection, use, and  disclosure of personal information collected from children under age 13 ". BSD is committed to creating student accounts  only from vendors who comply with Student Data Privacy, which is why we can’t just sign our students up for cool resources we find. I know, it’s a bummer. 

 Here are some useful resources that I found: 

• The Vermont Online Library - which you can get to from your school's Library Resource Page (HMS, EMS). Of all the resources, this is probably our most easily accessible and covers a wide range of topics. Lots of good stuff here in all sorts of realms - including history and science - with Lexile listed (and with articles searchable by their Lexile). 

• ReadWorks - https://www.readworks.org/ You can create a free account (though it tries to trick you into giving money). You can search by topic and grade level, and there are some tools about vocabulary and question sets.

• Common Lit - https://www.commonlit.org/en - Leveled texts (fiction and nonfiction). It's more on the Language Arts side of things (as you can see from the fact that you can search by ELA standard, too - but there are a variety of texts here…)

• Science Journal For Kids and Teens - https://www.sciencejournalforkids.org/ 170 different lesson sets with articles! Looks like a great resource.

• Dogonews - https://www.dogonews.com/ - more news-y resources - there is an option to simplify (which, of course, we're not advocating for) and listen to the article here. But again - we’re looking to push them to read and read on grade level.

• Science News Explores - https://www.snexplores.org/ - These are all science articles for ages 9-14.

If you find other reliable sources, please feel free to send them along! We’d love to add to this post with other options. 

Remember: our goal is to get students reading texts that are on or above their grade level frequently, with plenty of vocabulary support, context-building support, pre-activation of knowledge and partner/group talk. These sites will help identify and choose rich, rigorous texts so you can focus more on providing the structures to support that practice. Thanks for all you do in supporting your students and their reading!

For a full list of vendors who have signed Exhibit E documentation for the State of Vermont or the Burlington School District, click here: :https://sdpc.a4l.org/district_search.php?districtID=5469&state=VT