Article of the Week is a yearlong unit that I have developed and adapted from Kelly Gallagher‘s unit of the same name. 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.
- “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.