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 adaptations 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). In regards to 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. With the 2020-2021 school year online for a majority of the school year and the uncertainty of the 2021-2022 school year, reflections have moved to a digital format and the Writer’s Notebook has not been adapted.
Below is a list of AoWs for the 2022-2023 school year with the most recent being on top. All links lead to Google Docs that include directions on how to adapt them for your use. Articles that are not linked were used as assessments; therefore, formatting will not be shared.
- “The State Finally Letting Teens Sleep In” by Lisa L. Lewis for The Atlantic
- House of Soles
- “House of Soles opens in downtown East Lansing” by Mikayla Temple for FOX 47 News
- “Haslett teens open House of Soles, a store for sneakerheads” by Krystal Nurse for the Lansing State Journal
- “Metro Detroit man implants Tesla key into hand to unlock, start car” by Ingrid Kelley for FOX 2 Detroit
- “Belle Isle’s Giant Slide reopening again Friday after closing over speed concerns” by Cassidy Johncox for Local 4 News
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.