What are Checks for Understanding?
Checks for understanding is a scaffold and activity that encourages close reading with low-stakes, AI-generated, recall questions embedded within the text. These are available in both English and Spanish on news and informational texts across Newsela ELA, Newsela Science, and Newsela Social Studies.
What to know:
Each text will include one to four questions depending on the length of the text
How to assign:
You must assign checks for understanding in order for it to appear on a text a student reads
Checks for Understanding are automatically enabled by default in your Assignment Builder under Activities
If you are not interested in assigning checks for understanding, please uncheck the box next to it prior to assigning the article
Clicking on 'View' next to Checks for Understanding in the Assignment Builder will re-direct you to the first check within the article. From here you can scroll down to view the rest.
Completing checks for understanding:
Students must answer each check for understanding correctly in order to continue on in the text
As a low-stakes scaffold, students will have unlimited tries to correctly answer each question
Because these are meant as a low-stakes scaffold, it is not currently featured in a teachers grading.
Reviewing Checks For Understanding Data:
Checks For Understanding Data is added to the grading page, displaying:
whether or not students responded to a Checks For Understanding question
how many attempts it took to complete each Check For Understanding
students' responses (e.g., student selected answers B, D, and A, in order)
A Checks For Understanding column is also available on the assignment review page.
