What's New
Changes to The Daily Rooted, newest first.
More Iowa standards: Health, PE, Fine Arts and Computer Science
- Stories can now show Iowa Academic Standards codes for Health, Physical Education, Fine Arts (visual art, music, theatre, dance, media arts) and Computer Science, in addition to science, math, English and social studies.
- A person reviewed every story in Health & PE, Arts & Music, Technology and Careers, plus remaining history and civics stories. A code appears only when it exists for that grade, matches the story's subject, and truly fits on a careful re-read.
- Standards whose official text could not be read cleanly are never used for tags.
Business and Government stories, Trending, and more checks
- New Business section and a bigger Civics & Government section, with stories from official sources and no political slant.
- Every story now goes through a political slant check before it goes live. Stories with loaded or one-sided wording are held back.
- We re-checked facts, source links and Bible quotations in the newest stories (an accuracy audit).
- The site now has about 307 stories.
- Trending is live: see which stories readers are opening most. It counts story opens only, with no names or personal data.
- The About page now has an "About the founder" section.
- New sources added after a terms check: NASA Science and NASA Technology feeds, and two more Library of Congress blogs.
- New grade pages for Kindergarten through Grade 12. Find them under "Grades K-12" at the bottom of every page.
- Every story now has a printable worksheet for each grade. Kindergarten gets big dotted-midline tracing lines, large print and a picture. The lines get smaller and the tasks harder in each grade, and high school uses college-ruled lines.
- Stories now show Iowa Academic Standards codes for science, math, English language arts and social studies. A code appears only if it passes a three-part check: it exists for that grade, it matches the story's subject, and the story covers what the standard says.
Iowa standards tags reviewed by hand
- Every Iowa standards code on the grade pages was re-read against the story and the official standard. Codes that did not truly fit were removed, and new ones that clearly fit were added in science, math, social studies, and English.
- Fixed garbled wording in several math and science standards so the hover text matches Iowa's official wording.
Coming soon: an app and a premium version
- A Daily Rooted app and a premium version with extra tools for teachers are both in the works. The Daily Rooted you use today will stay free.
Careers section and stronger source rules
- New Careers & Real-World STEM section: short profiles of real people who do science work.
- Stories first spotted on Phys.org are now rewritten only from the original university press release or study, and credited to it.
- Removed stories now show a short "story removed" page instead of an error.
- New stories added in morning batches each day.
Privacy, copy checks and new sources
- Privacy and Terms pages added. Story images are now stored on our own site, so your browser does not contact other companies.
- A copy check makes sure every story is in our own words before it is published.
- New sources: USGS news and NIH news releases (public government works).
- The Conversation was removed as a source because its license does not allow edited versions.
- Older stories from approved sources were added, so the archive goes back further.