Article of the Week is a yearlong unit that I have adapted from Kelly Gallagher and developed to fit the needs of my students. Gallagher’s purpose for assigning these non-fiction texts is to provide his students with information to enhance their prior and background knowledge in order for them to be stronger readers, writers, and thinkers.
I, too, recognize that my students need more context with certain topics, books, issues, and articles, so I have assigned Articles of the Week (AoWs) since 2015.
I often turn to two mentors when creating AoWs for my students – Kelly Gallagher and Dave Stuart Jr.
My version of the weekly assignments have opportunities for close reading and reflective writing skills. The purpose of close reading is “to focus on comprehension, making meaning through careful and thoughtful examination of the text” (Lent, 2016, p. 54). With reflective writing, I’m looking for students to reflect on their thoughts, beliefs, opinions, experiences, etc. that tie in and relate to the topics being covered in the Article of the Week. Gallagher also has his students reflect.
Pre-COVID-19, I had students reflect in their Writer’s Notebook, which was an idea I picked out of Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson. The Writer’s Notebook was not utilized between September 2020 to May 2024. At the end of the 2023-2024 school year, I reflected that I’ve become too reliant on Google Classroom and digital tools, so the Writer’s Notebook has been used again in my classes as of August 2024.
Below will be a list of AoWs for the 2025-2026 school year. The most recent articles used are on top. All links prompt you to make a copy of the existing Google Doc(s).
- “The New York Times put its Mini Crossword behind a paywall. Users are furious” by Melina Khan for USA TODAY
- “McLaren Greater Lansing’s pet therapy program brings comfort & connection” by McLaren Greater Lansing for the Lansing State Journal
- “Suspended Little Leaguer’s bat sells for nearly $10,000 at auction” by AP: Sports and “New Jersey Little Leaguer plays after judge lifts his suspension for ‘unsportsmanlike’ bat flip” by Dan Geltson for AP: Sports
- “‘Skibidi’ and ‘tradwife’ among words added to Cambridge Dictionary” by Laura Devlin for BBC
Note: Articles are subject to the copyright protections specified by the original source.
Looking for previous year’s AoW assignments? Check out the Article of the Week Archive.
References:
Lent, R.C. (2016). This is disciplinary literacy: Reading, writing, talking, and doing … content area by content area. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.