Articles and text sets for students

Teaching Tolerance provides a database of classroom resources, searchable by grade level and subject. These supplemental materials make a great way for students to look at topical issues through primary and secondary documents.

Newsela is an online database of news articles from reputable newspapers that can be adapted for different reading levels.  Useful for teaching current events, the articles come with quizzes and writing prompts and can be shared digitally or printed.  The site is free to use but registration is required. For a fee, teachers can enable more features such as tracking quiz grades and assigning writing responses to students. 

ReadWorks provides a large, high quality library of curated nonfiction and literary articles along with reading comprehension and vocabulary lessons, formative assessments, and other instructional supports.  Teachers can filter by topic, grade level, Lexile level, and resource type and by which enhancements they'd like (audio recording to accompany the article, for example.)  The site is free to use but you may need to create an account. 

CommonLit is a free online library of fiction and nonfiction texts for 5-12th graders.  Teachers can search and filter the collection by lexile, grade, theme, genre, literary device, or standard. The site offers the following features: a summary of the author and text, text-dependent questions, the option of having comprehension questions appear as students read,  and different features to make the texts more "readable" like numbered paragraphs and adjustable font sizes. For free, teachers can use the site and create up to 100 student accounts. Registering with the site is required. 

The Smithsonian's TweenTribune shares daily Associated Press news articles along with their lexile levels, comprehension questions, and  lesson plans. Articles can be filtered by grade band; articles in Spanish are also provided. The resource is free but teachers are encouraged to create an account. 

Storyline Online streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Readers include Viola Davis, Chris Pine, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, James Earl Jones, Betty White and dozens more. This site is free to use. 

TextProject's BeginningReads program supports teachers, parents, and tutors in bringing children (especially ELLs) into reading. The goal of BeginningReads is to connect student’s oral language knowledge with written language. Each level has twelve 4-page books that share a set of concepts, which allows young readers to see the same words in many different texts.  The BeginningReads books and the Toolkit for Tutor guide as downloadable PDFs from their website. 

Students can read and be read to through Unite for Literacy's library of digitized books. Unite for Literacy partners with businesses to create a digital library to reduce book scarcity in low income areas.  Books feature diverse characters, are mostly nonfiction, and for young readers. 

ScienceNews for Students (SNS) provides age-appropriate, topical science news to students. Each story includes further readings, citations to the original research on which the stories are based, power words (glossary terms) and a readability score that ensures the text is accessible to teens and tweens. Longer features also have extra materials to aid in classroom use.SNS is a publication of the Science News Media Group, which is a program of the Society for Science & the Public (SSP), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education. 

Youth Radio shares articles and videos written and created by young journalists in training. Youth Radio provides a way for students to learn about current and pressing issues that affect teen life around the U.S. and the world.  Students will learn about media production as well; this site is especially recommended for students interested in journalism or media studies.