Article of the Week

One of my favorite things about starting a new week is our Article of the Week. The Article of the Week is just like it sounds...we read a current event article. This year we have read articles about a buddy bench, the drought in California, baseball in the Dominican, veterans of Pearl Harbor, starfish in the Pacific, whales, sledding bans, and the list goes on and on.

Today we read an article about a volleyball player and her family who were suing her club team because of lack of playing time. It was a fun article that really made me think about whether or not the girl had a right to sue her team. Her parents had paid to play on the team and were promised playing time. When that playing time was not given, the family was unhappy.

One of the reason I love the Article of the Week is it allows the class to keep up to date with topics that are going on in the world around them. This year we will read 30 plus articles about a variety of topics. These articles just build the background knowledge of the class. In the future they might be able to use this background knowledge when reading other articles or having discussions or in other classes.

The other reason that I love the Article of the Week is it allows us to revisit some reading strategies or thinking skills that students can use when they read. Today we revisited the idea of Synthesizing Spirals. Synthesizing is one of our reading strategies that I probably talk about the most. The idea of synthesizing is that a reader most change their thinking as they read. The reader will change her mind based on what is occurring in the text. To reinforce this idea of synthesizing I marked four places in today's article where we would stop and write about our thinking. Each spot was marked with a spiral. The spirals that I marked in the article got larger as we went along in the article to remind the students that their thinking should be growing and changing as they read.

The students used some of our synthesizing thinking stems as we read the article and filled out our Synthesizing Spirals:

• My new thinking is...
• I'm beginning to think...
• Now I understand why...
• I'm changing my mind about...
• I used to think ________ but now I think...

These thinking stems really allow the students to show their thinking. If you are reading or even watching a movie at home, you can practice this strategy. If you are looking for some of your own articles to read at home my two favorite sites are Newsela and TweenTribune. Both sites are amazing because they allow you to adjust the reading level to fit what you need.

Hope your week is off to a great start and I hope the Reds can find someone to pitch the eighth inning UGHHHHHH!