This past Monday I found myself once again starting kids on the journey that is Kelly Gallagher’s article of the week assignment. I wish I had taken a video of myself teaching (primarily to illustrate that the start, at least in my classroom, is far from the stuff of movies). But since I didn’t, I thought […]
purposeful annotation
Purposeful Annotation: A “Close Reading” Strategy that Makes Sense to My Students
If you look at my original close reading post, you’ll see I was basically using the phrase “close reading” to refer to annotation. It took me a year or more to realize that I was saying one buzzwordy thing to mean a lot of explicit, less confusing things that readers do when grappling with a […]
There and Back Again: My Journey with Gallagher’s Article of the Week Assignment
Before the Common Core were a twinkle in David Coleman’s eye, Kelly introduced an assignment into his classroom called article of the week. In the assignment, students read complex informational texts and responded to them in writing. That writing was nearly always a blend of the explanatory and argumentative modes, and it often culminated with a discussion of the issues […]