How Scholastic News Builds Knowledge, Literacy, and Confident Readers

Scholastic News® (Grades 1–5)

• An Essential Curriculum Companion: Scholastic News fills content gaps in science and social studies while reinforcing ELA skills. It is designed as curriculum support, not enrichment.

• Bridges the Fiction-Nonfiction Divide: Scholastic News provides steady exposure to authentic nonfiction when core ELA programs skew toward fiction, and introduces informational text features in developmentally appropriate ways.

• Reading That Leads to Reflection and Growth: Students don’t just engage with content—they internalize it. At Perry Elementary, second graders read about kids who wrote letters to create change, then launched a letter-writing campaign of their own. Scholastic News strengthens the connection among reading, reflection, and growth as thinkers.

• A Resource Teachers Actually Use: Scholastic News was chosen because it works across grade levels, learning styles, and formats. The magazines are delivered consistently and placed directly in students’ hands every week.

Anne Troendly has spent 39+ years in education. She has seen programs come and go, budgets tighten, and standards shift. What she’s learned is that the resources that actually work are the ones teachers pick up and use—not the ones that collect dust on a shelf.

For years before East Muskingum had a formal K–3 core curriculum, teachers created their own materials. That freedom led to inconsistency. Not every student received the same exposure. Even when textbooks were provided, they didn’t solve the problem.

Textbooks date quickly. They’re heavy, static, and disconnected from the world students actually live in. Teachers wanted something current and tangible that kids could take home. Scholastic News delivered all of that.

East Muskingum has used Scholastic magazines for more than 30 years—spanning Weekly Reader’s era through today’s Scholastic News. That longevity isn’t inertia; it’s trust, earned year after year in classrooms across the district.

According to Anne, she has never received a complaint from a parent about a Scholastic News article. In a district where community relationships matter and resources are limited, that track record carries real weight. The content is trusted by teachers, families, and the students who read it every week.

The district now spans two PreK–2 buildings and one Grades 3–5 building. Scholastic reaches K–6 classrooms across all three, including sixth-grade social studies.

When Anne considers the district’s budget, the calculus is simple: she knows this resource is being used. In public education, allocated dollars that don’t reach students aren’t just waste—they’re lost opportunity. Scholastic News earns its place in every building where it’s ordered.

The Science of Reading has reshaped how districts approach early literacy. Ohio has mandated training for all teachers, and East Muskingum was ahead of the curve—its K–3 educators were trained before the state requirement took effect, using post-COVID funding to build that foundation early.

The district now uses rigorous, evidence-based ELA programs that are also largely fiction-based—by design. Early decodable texts are structured to build decoding skills, not to expose students to the world. Informational text and background knowledge—both essential to the Science of Reading—require something more.

That’s where Scholastic News steps in. Authentic nonfiction. Real topics. Content that gives students something to think, talk, and write about. Students may not be able to read every word independently, but the conversations those articles generate lay the foundation for comprehension and background knowledge that the Science of Reading demands.

At Perry Elementary in Zanesville, Ohio, Scholastic News is part of the weekly rhythm for first- and second-grade students. Two teachers—Wendy Matheney in first grade and Tammie Highman in second—use the magazines differently. Yet they’ve seen the same thing happen: students who start as readers become engaged thinkers who reflect and grow.

Wendy Matheney has taught first grade at Perry Elementary for 13+ years. Every Friday, her students gather for Writer’s Workshop—and at the center of it is a Scholastic News magazine.

She walks them through the issue: articles, videos, activities, and dance breaks. They read together, talk, and move. Then they write. The magazine becomes the mentor text, the conversation starter, and the creative prompt—all at once.

When students work independently, Wendy pulls skills sheets. When a student can’t access the print, the digital read-aloud feature fills the gap—no child is locked out of the content. She also draws on the magazine’s archives to supplement science and social studies topics that her core curriculum doesn’t fully cover.

For first graders, the experience of a physical magazine can't be replicated by screens. The act of holding it, flipping through it, and taking it home—that’s part of what makes it stick.

By the time students reach Tammie Highman’s second-grade classroom, their relationship with Scholastic News has shifted. Second graders at Perry gravitate toward the digital platform. They're drawn to its interactive features, read-aloud function, and games that reinforce vocabulary and comprehension after the group read. The physical magazine still comes home, but the screen is where they want to work.

That matters in a classroom where reading levels span a wide range. The digital platform doesn’t require every student to engage the same way. A student who needs read-aloud support gets it. A student ready to read independently moves at their own pace. The content is the same for everyone—the pathway to it isn’t. For a second grade teacher managing that range every Friday, built-in differentiation is vital.

The Friday discussion that follows each issue is its own kind of evidence. Second graders are making connections across what they’ve read, challenging each other’s ideas, and asking questions the article doesn't answer. That quality of discourse doesn’t happen with materials students don’t care about. It happens when the content meets them where they are and offers them something real to think about.

The moment that defines Perry Elementary’s story didn’t happen during a lesson. It began with an article.

Tammie’s second graders read a Scholastic News issue featuring students at another school who had launched a letter-writing campaign—kids who saw something they wanted to change and decided to write their way toward that change. Their actions resonated with the children in Tammie's classroom.

They decided to do the same. Their first letter went to the school cafeteria: a formal petition requesting that popsicles be added to the lunch menu. It was specific, earnest, and entirely self-initiated. No assignment. No prompt. Just students who had read about kids using their voices and concluded that they could, too.

It didn’t stop there. Letter writing became the tool these second graders used whenever they felt something at school needed to change. They had learned—from a magazine, from a story about other kids—that writing was how you made yourself heard. They applied that lesson with conviction.

At Perry Elementary, students read about civic action, recognized themselves in it, and reflected on what it meant to them. The magazine built more than literacy skills; it fostered the belief that their words could make a difference.

East Muskingum didn’t adopt Scholastic News because it was required. They adopted it because teachers wanted it, students engaged with it, and the district could see it was being used. Thirty years later, that hasn’t changed.

Whether it’s a first grader writing a letter to the principal after a Scholastic News article discussion or a sixth grader exploring current events through a social studies lens, the through line remains the same—trusted, current, and engaging content that meets students where they are.

That’s what Scholastic Magazines+ positions itself as: the essential curriculum companion aligned with your core and your standards. At East Muskingum, that’s exactly what it’s been.