Making Learning Meaningful with Article Choice Sets

• I realized that I always buy stuff that I don’t need. In this article, it said “Ask yourself if you really want something before you buy it.” When I saw this sentence, I thought that I should take that advice. (from student response to “How to save money as a kid”)
• What interested me the most was Michael was diagnosed with epilepsy and he needed to stop gymnastics, climbing trees and diving—all of the things that he loved. If I were Michael I would be really sad. I think that’s why he thought more strongly to help the other people. (from student response to “This 10-year-old opened a bakery; for every cupcake he sells, he gives one to the homeless”)
• I was surprised because he actually created a bank for children. Usually we end up only thinking about it and don’t take any action, but he actually created a bank. I noticed that it’s a very good thing to take action rather than just thinking about it. (from student response to "Teen entrepreneur in Peru runs a bank for kids, helps environment")

I love it when students really engage with the class material, not just because it is assigned, but because something in it piques their curiosity or grabs their attention. That happened recently in an 8th grade EFL class, and I want to replicate this activity in future units. The magic fairy dust, I think, was student choice, practical application or real-life models, and an ethical dimension—all while practicing reading, writing, thinking, speaking, and listening in English.

I took the “article of the week” idea and married it to student choice based on the unit topic, which was money, to go with the grammar focus of quantifiers. NewsELA is a great source of articles for students learning English because the articles are available at 5 different lexiles. A quick search of the topic “money” turned up 3 articles that had variety, relevance, an ethical dimension, and a global component:

• How to save money as a kid (lexile choices: max, 850, 720, 560, 430)
• Teen entrepreneur in Peru runs a bank for kids, helps environment (lexile choices: max, 1190, 1030, 840, 560) 
• This 10-year-old opened a bakery; for every cupcake he sells, he gives one to the homeless (lexile choices: max, 810, 660, 550, 410)

I made copies to pass around and gave students one minute to scan and then pass, deciding at the end which of the three articles they were interested in reading. I was delighted when I had some takers for every article.

The assignment I adapted from a free article of the week template on Teachers Pay Teachers. There are several pages of thorough explanation, expectations, sample articles and reflection questions, and a grading sheet—grab the packet if you’re interested. Here’s briefly what students did with their chosen article:

1. Close read and annotation: Highlight or underline at least 3 words/phrases you find important, interesting, confusing, and write a note in the margin for each about why you selected that bit. This is your brain on paper, showing me your thinking about what you’re reading as you read (see above). 
2. Summary statement: Title, summary verb, and approximately 50 words
3. Vocabulary journal form (4 entries): These are 1/2-page forms including places for the word, part of speech, definition, context sentence, visual representation, synonyms, and antonyms (see below).
4. Reflection: I used a list of sentence stems, out of which students were to pick 3 and complete each with 2-3 sentences. (I noticed…, I wonder why…, I can relate to this because…, etc.) 

Vocabulary journal form

We took it slowly because this was the first time through for an 8th grade EFL class: one day each for reading, vocabulary, summary, response. After each step except reading, students shared with the class in some way: teaching one of their vocabulary words to classmates, reading aloud their summary, and presenting the combined summary and response for a question/answer time. I'd love to do this with my 6th/7th grade ELA class as well as my high school EFL class. In a future use, I'd also wrap up with a discussion of the ethical aspects of money. This time I tried introducing the articles that way, and it was a little slower going. So much potential here!