News Articles Help Students Develop Reading Skills
The Article of the Week is based on a concept developed by educator Kelly Gallagher. Gallagher recognized that the chief reason his students were struggling with reading comprehension was due to their lack of prior knowledge. His solution was “Article of the Week.” Students are assigned a current news article every Monday. Under their teacher’s guidance, students develop close reading skills necessary for higher academic study.
Adapted for middle school classrooms:
The articles were developed based on Gallagher’s strategies but have been modified to meet the needs of middle school students and align with Indiana Common Core standards. Each article ranges in lexile from 900-1200; hundreds of points above the reading level of our average student. This causes readers to intentionally slow down, think critically about what they’re reading, and apply context clues for unfamiliar vocabulary. Students learn to annotate the article by noting their thoughts, questions, and reactions to the text. After reading to understanding, students answer higher level questions, which cause them to cite the text and make inferences- utilizing reading skills based on the Indiana Academic standards.
Classroom implementation:
In order to implement the Article of the Week effectively, teachers spend the first month modeling the activity.
1. Teacher models: close reading skills, annotating, and answering the questions.
2. Teacher assigns new article on Monday and reviews the article on Friday.
Next level application:
Once students become familiar with the process of Article of the Week, they can move up to next level thinking by creating their very own article.
1. First students apply their knowledge of credible sources and find an unbiased news article.
2. Then students paste the article inside the template provided by their teacher.
3. Students determine the lexile level of the article by using the “lexile framework for reading” tool found at www.lexile.com.
4. Students write original questions based on the Indiana Academic Standards 6/7/8.RL.1-4 and 6/7/8.RN.1-4. (Box 1 assesses comprehension, box 2 requires basic inference, boxes 3 & 4 are high order thinking questions.)
5. Lastly, students head their template, cite their source, and edit their work.
Challenges or Obstacles:
- Since the articles are at a higher reading level, modeling with the students can become time consuming, especially in the beginning months.
- Some teachers also found the articles cumbersome to grade, the original rubric difficult, and it time consuming to grade annotations.
Benefits and Successes
- Teachers have seen growth in their students vocabulary skills, close reading skills and answering higher-order, open-ended questions.
- Thought to be an excellent tool used regularly to prepare for ISTEP.
Submitted by: Jenny Eltringham, Highland Middle School