In our developmental language class at the college, we are constantly looking for text that are instructional level. Many of our students are ESL with emerging literacy skills. It has been a challenge to find appropriate materials that are fun, interesting while captivating our readers. The first problem was not knowing what lexile level was best fit for each individual. Our Learning Resource Center began testing lexiles as an entry assessment as well as lexiling each book in our library by color code. We are super careful to keep this information confidential and not equate this with intellectual/grade level. From this our faculty has students self-select genres that were most interesting to them to complete various assignments, but our instructors wanted more options.
Newslea
As my son (8th grade) was studying for history, I noticed that he was able to self-select popular current events from real news sources from a site called Newslea. Newslea is a free subscription (but of course, the paid features are slick and educators can use this as a grade to assess comprehension) that allow students to adjust their lexile reading level within 980, 820, 690, down to 480 on any given article. What I love most about this feature is that every student has the same capability so no one knows who needs the accommodation. It also has comprehension quizzes and writing prompts.
Credo Reference
After sharing Newslea with our librarian she told me that we had features on Credo Reference and Credo Reference LibGuides that would read any title to students in over 60 languages (the only problem……not Alaska Native or American Indian). These features allow access to text that might be more challenging to read independently. Another feature of Credo is information literacy modules that offer read-aloud features while a cursor follows along with written text and a short informational multi-media video help illustrate the topic. Faculty can set this up to automatically sync to our grade book and we can adjust the attempts available to the class before finalizing grades. The last feature that I enjoy about Credo is that students can add permalinks to discussion boards or it will automatically cite your papers based on what type of citation the instructor requires (where was this when I was in Grad school?). All these features give better access to our students to increase their literacy skills.
What adaptive technology do you use for literacy skills in the classroom and what features do you enjoy most?
aksoldotnaedtech 
Always on the lookout for accessibility software. thanks for the review. Dr. F
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I talk to my students a lot about their Lexile level. I’m pleased to see that the conversation doesn’t stop when they leave elementary school. One of the teachers in my school uses Newsela religiously and swears by it! She mentioned that it has news written in kids-terms but failed to mention that it adapts texts to particular Lexile ranges. I will need to look into this. Thanks for sharing.
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One of our middle school teachers uses Newsela and it is great for so many of our students. At times I assign students to complete article reviews and I have noticed many of them use Newsela to help them read the articles at their level. It is a great tool! I haven’t heard of Credo Reference, but I will have to check it out. Thanks!
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