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 2021-2022 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.
- “Biden becomes first president to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day with presidential proclamation” by the Associated Press for USA Today
- McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys
- “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys to be plastic-free by 2025” by Thomas Barrabi for FOXBusiness
- “McDonald’s is giving its Happy Meal toys a makeover” by Danielle Wiener-Bronner for CNN Business
- “Jason Reynolds Named Inaugural Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week” by Betsy Gomez for Banned Books Week Coalition
- “The D’Amelio kids are not alright” by Rebecca Jennings for The Goods by Vox
- “Both Community and Garden Grow In ‘Seedfolks’” by NPR Staff for NPR’s Backseat Book Club
- “N.F.L. Will Allow Six Social Justice Messages on Players’ Helmets” by Michael Levenson for the New York Times
- “Nike closes offices for a week to give employees a mental health break” by Devon Haskins for KGW News
- “Fortnite is now allowing users to watch the MLK ‘I have a dream’ speech in the game. But why?” by Rishi Iyengar for CNN Business
- “Mattel says it ‘fell short’ on Asian representation in Olympics Barbie collection” by Bianca Brutus for NBC News
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.