Words Matter: High School ELA Unit

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) has been widely heralded in recent years as one of the nation’s fastest-improving urban public school districts. Most coverage has focused on the district’s strong and stable leadership and its sustained focus on educator effectiveness.

Teachers know that meeting students’ individual needs in a bustling classroom is a Sisyphean task. But the job may be getting easier, thanks to a variety of new digital literacy tools. Last year Debra Rook began using Newsela, a program that uses news articles about current events to build reading comprehension, and customizes each article for five different reading levels.

Education writer Greg Toppo and Vicki Phillips hosted a Twitter chat on what makes a digital game good (or bad), what teachers have learned from bringing digital games into their classrooms and what game designers can learn from teachers’ experiences.