Article of the Week is a yearlong unit that I have adapted from Kelly Gallagher‘s unit of the same name and developed into fitting 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 adaptations for skills assessed both in this unit and beyond.
One of the skills that is focused on with Article of the Week assignments is close reading. The purpose of close reading is “to focus on comprehension, making meaning through careful and thoughtful examination of the text” (Lent, 2016, p. 54).
Another skill covered with the assignments is that of 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. I have students reflect in their Writer’s Notebook, which was an idea I picked out of my reading of Mechanically Inclined by Jeff Anderson.
Below is a list of AoWs for the 2019-2020 school year with the most recent being on top. Articles that are not linked were used as assessments; therefore, formatting will not be shared. If you are interested in a Word document version, feel free to send me an email – bn.wdcck@gmail.com – with the subject line “AoW Word Doc.”
- “The Springs Ran Dry. Then This Australian Town Burned” by Thomas Fuller and Isabella Kwai for the New York Times
- “Random drug testing of student athletes approved by Michigan school district” by Kayla Miller for mLive
- “MRIs show screen time linked to lower brain development in preschoolers” by Sandee LaMotte for CNN
- “OK Boomer”
- “‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations” by Taylor Lorenz for the New York Times
- “OK Boomer, OK Millennial, we need to talk” by Jill Filipovic and Paul Callan for CNN: Opinion
- Flint and Security Cameras
- “Cameras installed in Flint neighborhoods with high crime” by Jake May for mLive
- “Flint considering ordinance requiring security cameras at certain businesses” by Ann Pierret for ABC12
- “7 Ways to Balance Reading Multiple Books at Once” by Team Epic Reads for Epic Reads
- “Vontaze Burfict was the ‘no-brainer’ that backfired on Raiders” by Paul Gutierrez for ESPN
- “Restaurant adds sensory tool kits to help diners” by Ashley Graham for WLNS
- “Ms. Monopoly is supposed to empower women. Critics say it does the opposite” by Annie Nova for CNBC
- “New iPhone’s ‘trypophobic’ design disturbs people with fear of holes” by Amy Woodyatt for CNN
- “Trump is diverting $3.6 billion from the US military to fund his border wall” by Alex Ward for Vox
- “Antonio Brown in Oakland: Helmets, frost bite, fines and release” by Paul Gutirrez for ESPN
- “TSA bans Disney’s bomb-shaped Star Wars Coca-Cola bottles from all flights” by Chris Gates from Digital Trends
- “MDHHS investigating reports of respiratory illnesses linked to e-cigarettes and vaping” by Alyssa Burr from mLive
- “White Sox’s Michael Kopech: Offensive tweets ‘not who I am now'” from ESPN
Note: Articles are subject to the copyright protections specified by the original source.
References:
Lent, R.C. (2016). This is disciplinary literacy: Reading, writing, talking, and doing … content area by content area. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.