Skip to main content

Article of the Week

r
The Life of an English Teacher
You may recall me mentioning Kelly Gallagher, my celebrity crush, in previous posts.  Well, I guess he's not exactly a celebrity but in my mind, he's a superstar! I stumbled across one of his ideas on Pinterest this summer.  This led me to purchase every single one of his books, which, in my opinion, has transformed, rejuvenated, and inspired me as a teacher!  
One of his ideas that I implemented this year is the Article of the Week! Each week I assign students an article to read and annotate. They must also write a summary of the article (I provide a template), as well as a personal response.  For the latter part of the assignment, students have numerous choices.  
Sometimes I choose articles from Gallagher's website, and other times I choose my own articles that complement what we are reading in class.  Here is a partial list of what we've read so far:

"That Flinty Taste"-about the lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan
"Teenagers, Friends, and Bad Decisions"-this worked well with The Outsiders
"The Wonder of the Teen Brain"
"The Distracted Teenage Brain"
"Affluenza"
"The 750 Dollar Pill"-about the high cost of prescription drugs in the United States
"Workplace Spying"
"The Frightening Truth about the Future of Driverless Cars"
"8 Reasons Europe's Refugee Crisis is Happening Now"
"Soccer's Corrupt Soul"
"How to be Loved by Everyone: 6 Powerful Secrets"-hint, be quiet and LISTEN
Meaningful Annotations-Summarizing and defining unknown words

Love how this student uses both drawings and words in her annotations

My students have learned to read critically.  They are now experts at identifying the author's central argument and writing accurate summaries using academic language.  Most importantly, they are learning about the world around them!  I believe that acquiring background knowledge on a variety of topics helps students become better readers and writers!  Plus, it makes them more interesting people!





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TQE: Get students Engaged and Digging Deep

I've mentioned before how Twitter has helped me grow as an educator.  Edutwitter is a valuable resource for book recommendations, new teaching methods, lessons, and articles.  One of my favorite educators to follow is Marissa Thompson, a high school teacher at Carlsbad High. This summer I read about her TQE(thoughts, questions, epiphanies) method for discussing literature.  I'd always longed for having discussions like the ones I had in my college literature courses, but when I try fishbowl or Socratic seminar with my students, the discussions felt forced, flat, and awkward. That changed today when I tried TQE for the first time.  Sharing homework in small groups Students writing their TQEs on the board When I listened to Marissa's podcast on Cult of Pedagogy ( check it out here ), I was intimidated. After all, her students are in high school and have a rock star teacher.  I think I read the transcript twenty times before finally trying it.  Here's h

Writing an Essay...with a Partner

I love technology for collaboration! Teaching writing to middle school students is not easy.  All students come with different skills and knowledge.  With 35 students in a class, it's impossible to sit down one on one and assist students with the writing process.  Teaching students to write a literary analysis is particularly challenging because most seventh-graders have little, to no experience.  Students need to learn to  develop a thesis statement, find evidence from the text to support it, provide the context of the selected quotations , and write insightful commentary on the evidence they selected. Remember, these kiddos are twelve! Graphic organizers are particularly helpful to these young writers. The biggest challenge is providing feedback to students as they are writing, rather than after they turn their work in for a grade.  Students need to be able to use the feedback they receive and see the difference it makes in the final product.  I was adamant that I was not go

The Outsiders

Anyone else remember reading The Outsiders in middle school?  I remember reading it in 7th grade in 1981. Oh how I loved that book!  Then came the movie!  Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Leif Garret, Matt Dillon, and Patrick Swayze were some of the actors in this Francis Ford Coppola film.  I have to admit that it was a little depressing this year when I mentioned that Tom Cruise was in the movie, and only one student said, "I think I have heard of him."   Yet, here it is 2014 and my students are enjoying this book as much as I did.  On the surface the book is about two rival "gangs," the Socs and the Greasers.  However, the book is about so much more.  It is about stereotypes and prejudging people.  It's about true friendship, family, and loyalty.  It's about courage and growing up.  That makes it the perfect book for middle schoolers. I started off the unit with a web quest about the 1960s to get the students acquainted with the setting of the novel.  They