News‑2‑You connects students with special needs to the world around them, enabling them to expand their horizons and engage in relevant current events’ topics. A supplementary tool for literacy and learning, News‑2‑You is presented in an accessible format, supporting cross-curricular digital and media literacy. Skill-building activities enhance student understanding and engagement, encouraging communication, vocabulary, writing, geography, and more. And it’s a great communication opportunity for family discussions, fostering conversations both in and out of the classroom about relevant issues of the day.

News-2-You nurtures the growth of lifelong readers, regardless of their specific needs, by providing several different reading levels for each story: Advanced, Higher, Regular, Simplified, and Text Only, along with varying reading speeds, text-to-speech enablement, and answer highlighting. Students access the weekly newspaper issue online, with interactive speaking pages, or offline, using printable pages for instruction. Versions of the newspaper can be matched to individual learners, allowing all students access to the same news stories using the reading supports they need to be successful. 

News-2-You makes learning about world events fun and engaging for students. The main feature article sets the theme for each weekly edition, which also includes daily breaking news stories about people and places, accompanied by Google Maps that show where the news is happening. Additional pages featuring a recipe, joke, game, puzzle, Sudoku, and more, reinforce vocabulary introduced in the main feature story.

Students can also create their own newspapers with Class News, a self-paced, onscreen activity designed to encourage collaboration between students, and foster strong associations with the weekly edition of News‑2‑You. Following discussion prompts, the class creates their own newspapers specific to a school district, classroom, or student. 

Did you know?

Research conducted by Dr. Dan Sullivan of the University of Minnesota shows that students who use newspapers in class score better on standardized reading tests than those who don’t. The study examined programs in 22 cities across the U.S., and in all cases, students who used newspapers achieved higher standardized reading test scores than those who didn’t have access to newspapers in the classroom. Because news stories display different types of writing, including narrative, persuasive, and expository, students learn to read and comprehend various types of content. In addition, newspapers bridge the gap between the real world and the classroom, helping students to learn life skills, make career decisions, and become lifelong learners. Newspapers in the classroom can give students an essential boost in their ability to read, and News-2-You provides that critical link for students in special education classrooms.