Articles of the Week 2012-13

This is an ongoing listing of links to the Articles of the Week used with our Leaving Certificate pupils this academic year.

The idea came from the American teacher and writer Kelly Gallagher, and it fits very well into the Leaving course, getting pupils used to reading interesting articles and thus helping them in both the comprehension and composition sections of their Paper 1, as well as expanding their knowledge base and providing interesting topics for discussion.

Click here for Gallagher's current articles, and read more about the theory behind the scheme in his excellent book Readicide: how schools are killing reading and what you can do about it. Pupils have to mark up the articles with annotations before class discussion.

1. 'Turn off the Phone (and the Tension)' by Jenna Wortham, New York Times, August 2012.
2. 'Personal Bests', by Caragh Little, Huffington Post, September 2012.
3. 'The Britishisation of American English', by Cordelia Hebblethwaite, BBC News, Washington DC, September 2012
4. 'The Innocence of Islam', by Vincent Durac, The Irish Times, Saturday 22nd September 2012
5. ‘Books Change How a Child’s Brain Grows’ by Moheb Costandi in Wired Science, October 18th 2012
6. 'Sexist stereotypes dominate front pages of British newspapers', by Amelia Hill, The Guardian, Sunday 14th October 2012
7. 'Why Old-School Rote Learning is Still Important' by Annie Paul Murphy, Time Magazine, November 8th 2012
8. 'Text Messaging Turns 20' By Tracy McVeigh, The Observer, December 2nd 2012
9. 'Highlighting Is a Waste of Time: The Best and Worst Learning Techniques', by Annie Paul Murphy, Time Magazine, January 2013.
10. 'The Newtown shooting makes us feel helpless' by Charlie Brooker, The Guardian, December 17th 2012
11. ‘The introverts who walk the walk, but have no time for talk’, by Carol Ryan, The Irish Times, January 22nd 2013