Assignment Description

Assignment Description

Specific Directions:
Once this semester you will be required to create a summary (post) for a current event and/or respond to other student's summaries (comments).  The first assignment will be to comment on a post that I made.  You will be graded on how relevant and in depth your comment is.  It needs to show that you have read my post or the original article as well as created a relevant thought or question on the topic.

Here are some guidelines for comments:

• Directly address the material or ideas presented in the post
• Brings up a new perspective or idea
• References other sources as support for their argument
• Uses respectful academic language while agreeing and disagreeing with posts
• Is 3-5 sentences and shows some sort of understanding of the topic (you only need to address one of the questions provided)

Here are some guidelines for posts:

• Introduces a new current event topic that has not yet been posted
• Provides a link to an article from a reliable news source (see list to the right)
• Includes embedded images, video, charts, cartoon, etc.
• Includes a summary of the news article (in approximately 9-14 sentences)
• Connects current event to relevant topics in US Government (in approximately 1-3) sentence)–MUST connect with something specific that we have studies or should study
• Poses an issue or question for discussion
• Is approximately 225-300 words

	Author #1	Author #2	Author #3
9/6	Livvy	Ines
9/13
9/20	Laura	Karissa	Alicia
9/27	Leo	Chloe	Brenden
10/04	Ethan G	Ethan K
10/11	Casey	Ben
10/18	Juwon	Kyle
10/25	Moya	Lucas
11/1	Chris	Steven
11/08	Alex	Julia
11/15	Anthony	Adam
11/29	Matt	Mason
12/6

You must post by Friday evening.  That gives your classmates all weekend & the following week to make a comment.  McDermott will check the blog every Saturday to make sure that authors made their post.  He will check intermittently to see if students are commenting.  If it becomes apparent that students are not making their two comments per week, he will then check more carefully to ensure that students that are not commenting will lose points.  You can download the blogger app to your phone & lord knows that you guys are on your phone a lot.  If this is an issue, McDermott can help at lunch and other times.  First week’s authors are invited to a help session this Wednesday at lunch.  I will invite a few people to author at first & eventually everyone will be invited to author a post.  See the blog for instructions on how to post & comment.