Part of the reason my students have such a hard time reading is because they bring little prior knowledge and background to the written page. They can decode the words, but the words remain meaningless without a foundation of knowledge.

To help build my students’ prior knowledge, I assign them an "Article of the Week" every Monday morning. By the end of the school year I want them to have read 35 to 40 articles about what is going on in the world. It is not enough to simply teach my students to recognize theme in a given novel; if my students are to become literate, they must broaden their reading experiences into real-world text.

Below you will find the articles I assigned* this year to my students. Please note, all articles are subject to the copyright protections stipulated by the original source.

"Iran: The Showdown Over the Strait of Hormuz" The Week
"A Tough Homecoming for War Veterans" The Week
"The Fragile Teenage Brain" by Jonah Lehrer for Grantland.com
"Buff Your Brain" by Sharon Begley for Newsweek
"Al Qaeda on the Ropes: One Fighter's Inside Story" by Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau for Newsweek
"Last Convoy of American Troops Leaves Iraq, Marking an End to the War" New York Times
"Super PACs: All the Speech Money Can Buy" The Week (revised)
"Obsessed with Children" The Week
"NASA Launches Sophisticated Rover on Journey to Mars" by the Associated Press for the New York Times
"Bystander Psychology: Why Some Witnesses to Crime Do Nothing" by Maia Szalavitz and posted on Time.com
"Five Myths About Healthy Eating" by Katherine Mangu-Ward for the Washington Post
"The 'Occupy Wall Street' Movement" as posted on Wikipedia.com
"Paralyzed Man Uses Mind-Powered Robot to Touch" by Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer
"Cleaning Up the Trash in Space" The Week
"Brown Signs California Dream Act" by Patrick McGreevy and Anthony York for the Los Angeles Times
"Chimpanzees Clear Some Doubt After Generosity Is Questioned" by Carl Zimmer for the New York Times
"Are Americans Smarter Than Ever?" The Week
"Five Myths About Earthquakes" by Susan Hough for the Washington Post
"Making Headway in the Movement to Protect the World's Sharks" by Elisabeth Rosenthal for the New York Times
"A Legacy of Illnesses from 9/11" by Linda Zamosky for the Los Angeles Times
My Plate Replaces the Food Pyramid from ChooseMyPlate.gov


Looking for previous year's Article of the Week assignments? Check out the
Article of the Week Archive.

*While I assigned these, many of the lessons were prepared by my colleagues in the Magnolia High School English Department, including Helen Goldsmith, Amie Howell, Melissa Hunnicutt, Virginia Kim, Katrina Mundy, Esther Noh, Kalli Pappas, Sherri Rothwell, Lindsay Ruben, Margaret Tagler, Robin Turner, Michelle Waxman, and Dana White.