Article of the WeekA common core literacy gold mine!

• Can students recognize figures?• Informational texts can help!

From Readicide

“One way I addressed this problem in my classroom was by adding a weekly reading task I call ‘The Article-of-the-Week.’ These are real-world writings taken from straight news stories, essays, editorials, blogs, and speeches. I cull them from newspapers, magazines, and websites. Sometimes the articles are related to the unit we are currently studying and sometimes they are completely unrelated, but all the articles have one purpose--to broaden my students’ knowledge of the world. This past school

year, for example, my students read and studied more than thirty different articles.”

Quick Facts

● AoW is distributed every Monday and collected every Friday.

Ideas for grading:

○ Annotate the article

○ Answer questions

○ Write a reflection

Why I Use AoW

• As a direct result of living impoverished lives students can’t make connections between literature and real world events.

Teaching Annotation

•Annotation needs to be taught.•Annotation needs to be modeled.•Annotation will be unique to the individual.

What is Text Annotation?

While reading, students mark the pages for • Important

information• Text meaning or key

details• Ideas and questions• Vocab markings

Annotation creates MARGINALIA

Vocabulary Encounters

Content Vocabulary

Everyday Vocabulary

Annotate for vocabulary issues: Level 1 – Words the student

has never heard before & never knew existed

Level 2 – the student has heard the word, but likely could not use it correctly.

Level 3 – The student has heard the word and COULD probably use it, but needs some support

Level 4 – The student knows and uses the word with no problem.

Friday Discussion

Spend time on Friday discussing the article/music/painting/sport.

Student generated questionsParticipation is requiredGrade annotations

Let’s Practice

• We will read and annotate the same article• I will demonstrate/share the method I use

for monitoring and tracking discussion participation • Finally I will give you a copy of the

guidelines and assessment info I give to students.

Where to get good articles?

www.newsela.com• Requires registration (free) but there is also a paid

version. Allows the teacher to adjust the lexile level of the article being read, so that the article can be leveled for the needs of the students. A great resource for SPL.

Another source

www.theweek.com• A news site with fairly short articles – summarized from

reputable sources.• One of my favorite pieces of this web site is 10 THINGS

YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY which features up to the minute current events

www.kellygallagher.org • Under the resource section is his ARTICLE OF THE

WEEK. He posts the new one each week, that he uses in class.

• Archived Articles• He has obtained copyright permissions to reformat the

articles from the sources he obtains them from, so they look a bit different when printed.

http://vms.vale.k12.or.us/articles-week• An archive of articles of the week from Vale Middle

School, with new ones posted weekly• Sources are given, AND these can be downloaded in MS

Word form, to make printing and copying MUCH easier

APPS for AoW

ZITE• An app that allows you to set up preferences for the

topics you want to read.• It will offer suggestions and you rate the articles with a

thumbs up / down and incorporating that along with data about which articles you share via social networking an email, it uses an algorithm to develop a profile of the kinds of things you most like to read.