n2y has three different products: News-2-you, Unique Learning System, and SymbolStix. Supporting communication and literacy for people with disabilities in their mantra. I love News-2-You and I have been using it for years. It is an online subscription for your special education students that "connects the classroom to the world with news stories that provide new information on reader-friendly themes."
Each week you get a newspaper article that comes in 5 versions. The difference between the levels is the amount of text. The text is supported by picture symbols. Each version contains the same concepts but the presentation and format is varied.
Each week in the newspaper article, you get the news story, people in the news, places in the news, recipe, joke page, game page, matching page, review page, puzzle (crossword puzzle), sudoku, think page (questions about the article), and a word page (picture vocabulary).
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| Review page |
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| Recipe |
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| Sudoku page |
News-2-You now also offers interactive lesson plans as well as access on a variety of tablets.
I love using News-2-You in the classroom. I like to use if for social time, literacy, and life skills (recipe). We read the story together, answer the questions in the packet about the story and then we make the recipe that goes along with the story. We also do the extension activity that goes along with the article to learn more about the subject. The article this week is about Leap Year so during the extension activity we go through the slides the smart board. Comprehension questions are also embedded into the slide show to have your students answer them. At the end it contains two videos to extend the lesson and learn even more.
Overall it is just a fun way to get kids learning, reading, socializing and everything else in between! Do you use News-2-You? I would love to hear how you incorporate it into your classroom- leave a comment and get the discussion going!
