October E-Book: A Guide to Article of the Week

My new approach to using Kelly Gallagher's Article of the Week routine to teach reading, writing, and discussion skills.

This month’s unit is a little nontraditional. It’s not really a standalone 3-4 week unit at all, but rather a year-long, all-the-time rhythm of classroom life.

Originally Kelly Gallagher’s brainchild, I’ve used Article of the Week in different ways over the years. It has always been beneficial. But it has taken a lot of time. We could easily make a whole class out of just Articles of the Week, and it became so consuming a few years ago that I just dropped it altogether.

But. My kids need it. They hate reading nonfiction, and yet, moving forward, most of their academic reading will be nonfiction. They need reading skills to help them approach dense nonfiction texts with confidence. They need nonfiction stamina.

So I’ve brought it back this year but changed my approach a bit. Here were my guiding principles:

• Article of the Week activities can take no more than one day per “week”. (My school is actually on a 7-day rotation, so we do an Article of the Rotation, but I will NEVER remember to call it that. I see my students 5 times every 7 school days. So ONE of those five class periods is dedicated to AOW. But no more than that.)

• Article of the Week activities need to be planned in a regular rhythm so that I am not spending time inventing new activities all the time. (This ate up a lot of my time in the past.)

• Articles should do double duty where possible. If they can connect with other content in my class OR another class, fantastic!

• Article work should support other work we are already doing + teach transferable skills.

Everything I think you need to know is here in my 11-page Moving Writers Community Guide to Article of the Week.

Here’s what you’ll find inside:

• Guiding questions for choosing articles along with clickable article archives

• A schedule for article of the week activities

• Guiding questions for choosing reading skills and strategies to teach

• A list of nonfiction reading skills I teach

• Guiding questions for developing your own nonfiction reading strategies

• Resources for nonfiction reading strategies

• Guiding questions for exploring language in an article

• Instructions for 4 different kinds of field notes perfect for Article of the Week

• 7 “convocards” to help students have more productive text-based discussions

• 4 ideas for reviewing or extending article of the week work.

Members can download your FREE copy of the ebook here: