CURRENT EVENTS



CURRENT EVENTS

During the course of the year, you are required to write up a summary and response of current events. Each current event write up is worth ten points and is due every Friday.

What is a current event?

A current event is something that happens that is newsworthy. You can find accounts of these events in the newspaper, news magazines like Time, Newsweek, U.S. News. There are also news services on line that provide written accounts of newsworthy events. The television and radio also have news, and so they have current events, but they tend not to have the depth that the written reports have. The article will need to have quite a bit of information for you to be able to complete this assignment. Stay away from Op-Ed pieces and other editorial like articles.

What is a Summary and Response?

In this case, a summary is a paragraph that summarizes the main ideas of the article. Most news articles contain information that tells who, what, when, where, and how. Your summary should have these things in so that the reader can tell who or what you read about, where it happened, and when. The things in the summary should be important to the understanding of the article. The summary contains the key points of the article and only facts, no opinion.

The response is where you get to express your ideas and opinions. It should also be a paragraph. In this paragraph, you tell your reaction to the article. Did something in it surprise you or make you angry? Why is this news important to you and to the rest of the world? You should also make connections in the response. Does it have some connection to a historical event? Does it help you to understand something you learned about? Basically, you will be talking about why this article was newsworthy and how the information will affect people.

Requirements:

You will need to find one article each week. You do not need to cut out the article to turn in; however, you must cite the article in MLA format. (Title of article, author, newspaper or source of article, and date of article etc) The article you choose should be an article from the current week or the one just preceding it, otherwise it wouldn’t be “current”. You should avoid articles that are summaries of other articles and “in brief” articles as it is difficult to summarize an article that is already a summary. Short articles also are harder to respond to. If you use the internet for an article, you must include the entire URL for the article.

If at all possible, you should type your summary and response. If you choose to hand write your paper, you must use blue or black ink and write it in final copy form.

One summary and response or “current event” is due every other Friday unless told otherwise. The dates will be given per class.

Scoring

In order to receive the full ten points the entry must be cited correctly, written in complete sentences that are grammatically correct and contain all the information necessary to understand the article (this will be a minimum of two paragraphs, one for the summary and one for the response). Keep up with them, as over the course of the quarter they add up to nearly 150 points. Late papers are marked down. The assignment will close so at no time will you be turning in two current events at the same time.

Getting started

Here are some tips on how to get started. First of all, take some notes while you are reading the article, or highlight what you think are key points. Remember to write down the source of the article, the author, the date, and the title of the article. While you are reading look for the information answering the questions of: Who? What? Where? and When? within the article. Those are key things to help you understand the article. You can include a quote that backs up facts you put in your summary or one that sums up the essence of the article. These quotes are oftentimes more strongly used in your response as you are able to explain the reason for why you were drawn to it and what it explains about the article or your thoughts of the article.

When you start to think about your response ask yourself what do you already know about the topic? Did it clarify something for you? Or did it contradict something that you thought you knew? Is the author of the article showing any bias, or is he/she neutral? So what? Why is this news important? Who is likely to feel the impact of this news? What difference does it make to you and to others? What is your personal reaction to this news? How does this information change your understanding of the topic? Finally, are there issues that remain unanswered? Is there something else that you would like to know? What bothers you about this article? How do you think this could be changed?

One last tip: don’t just answer the questions from the above paragraphs. The questions are just guidelines to get you started. The article you choose may cause you to have a reaction that goes beyond those questions. The bottom line: You are required to think and put your thoughts into the paper, connecting it all back to the article and what it is saying. .

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