Friday, January 1, 2021

Effective Literacy Website #3 Breaking News English

Breaking News English 

            Breaking News English (https://breakingnewsenglish.com) is a literacy website that is tailored to English Language Learners. On this website there are free reading resources at different reading levels. Each reading resource mimics a real news headline. Most reading resources have before, during, and after reading activities that align with different reading strategies. This website is completely free to use for teachers, parents, and students. You do not need to create an account to access all these resources. 

            Breaking News English is a website that was developed in 2004. It offers free resources for English Language Learners from elementary age and older. The website offers reading material with quizzes, lesson ideas, and activities. All of this content can be accessed online and saved and downloaded to use in a traditional classroom setting. Students are able to read the article as well as have an audio clip reading it out to them. The audio clips can be downloaded to mp3 files for later listening. 

            One of the most unique features of Breaking News English is that all the reading resources are based off of current events from all over the world. The website gets regularly updated with news articles that match today’s date. There is an updated reading article at least once every few days.  This is a beneficial feature to not only build reading skills but to build background knowledge and awareness of the current events. 

            Each of the news articles has several activities students can do. There are pre-reading activities for the articles, such as brainstorming or activating prior knowledge. The website gives examples of charts students can fill out. There are also vocabulary activities such as finding synonyms, drawing the definition, and using the words in their own sentence. One of the most helpful activities for ELL students, would be matching phrases to definitions as that is something students whose main language is not English might have difficulty adapting to. The website also offers quizzes students can take to assess comprehension. 

            Breaking News English is a great literacy website that offers free resources to help ELL students in a fun, relevant way. This is a great literacy website because it is so easy to navigate. There are an abundant of free resources that students and teachers can use to practice. Students will enjoy their reading practice as the activities are simple to understand and the reading content is about real time current events. 




            

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