Current Event Article

Objective: Discuss and analyze current events

Summarize a current event news article

Materials: Newspaper article

Writing material (paper, pencil)

Directions:

1. Look through the newspaper for an article. In the classroom, you have access to Time for Kids, Bear Essential for Kids, Scholastic News, and Stars and Stripes. (NOTE: Sports-related articles only if about a major sports event. For example, the article cannot be about yesterday’s game.)

2. Before you begin to read the news article, think:

a. What do the photos and captions (if any) tell you about this article?

b. Infer what you think this article will be about.

3. As you read the news article:

a. Read a paragraph or two. Then stop and think about what you read.

b. What connections are you making? What’s this reminding you of?

c. What are you visualizing? What questions are in your mind as you read?

d. Highlight or circle new words. Figure out what they mean.

4. After you read the news article:

a. What are the big ideas you read about?

b. What do you think was interesting in the article?

5. Create a web of the article. The web should include the big idea and details that support this idea.

6. Write a summary of the article based on the web. The summary must include:

a. Title of the article (place quotes around the title)

b. Newspaper source (underline newspaper’s name)

c. Date of article

d. Identify if this article is a world, national, or local event.

e. Summary of the news article using your own words. Include the 5 Ws (Who was involved?; What happened?; Where did the event take place?; When did the event take place/publication date?; Why did you pick the article?)

f. Reason why the article was selected. The reason cannot be “because it was interesting” but rather why it was interesting.

Assessment:

You will be assessed on the following:

1. Quality of the web

2. Citations - news article, source, date

3. Identification of article -- world, national, or local event

4. Summary using own words

5. Reason for why the article was selected

6. Writing using Writing 6 Traits (Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word choice, Sentence fluency, Conventions, and Neatness)

You must include the article with your papers.

CURRENT EVENT NEWSPAPER RUBRIC

	0	1	2	3	4
Article	No article		Partial article only		Full article
Web	No web included	Missing major topic and/or supporting details	Incomplete or inadequate web	Adequate web, could use more detail	Complete and accurate web containing all details
Citations	No mention of article, newspaper, and/or date	Missing 2+ of: article, newspaper, and/or date	Missing only one: article, newspaper and date	Article, newspaper and date included, but not formatted correctly	Article, newspaper and date included, formatted correctly
Event	Does not identify article as world, national, or local event		Incorrectly identifies article as world, national, or local event		Identifies article as world, national, or local event
Summary	Did not include a summary	Used own words to answer at least 1: who, what, where, when and why	Used own words to answer at least 3: who, what, where, when and why	Used own words to answer at least 4: who, what, where, when and why	Used own words to answer who, what, where, when and why
Reasoning	Did not include a reason for article selection	No reasoning for article selection	Some reasoning for article selection	Adequate reasoning for article selection	Convincing reasoning for why article was selected
Overall		Of 24

Writing Rubrics

Ideas	1-6
Organization	1-6
Voice	1-6
Word Choice	1-6
Sentence Fluency	1-6
Conventions	1-6
Presentation (neatness)	1-6

Grade is applied to Social Studies, and Language Arts.