Purpose: Raising your awareness of current events and debates is a key aspect of becoming a more informed citizen. The AP test will assume that you have a broad and thorough understanding of key local, state, national and/or global issues. This assignment requires you to increase your skills in close reading, debate, and support of statements while also broadening your understanding of current issues.

Background: We will discuss current articles, essays and events on several Mondays throughout the semester. You are required to bring a current nonfiction magazine article or essay, or a feature newspaper article, to class and present the key ideas/arguments of the article. You may select to read an article online, but please print the article to bring with you to class. Choose significant social, political, economic, cultural issues. While Britney Spears' latest meltdown is all over the news, it is not "newsworthy". To prepare for this assignment each week, please complete the process listed below.

Process:

1) Choose one of the magazines or newspapers listed below and read an essay/article of quality writing which is approximately three pages long (two-column pages or 1,000 words). The article must have been written within the past three months.

2) Record the bibliographic information at Noodletools.com

a) Create a new list and title it “Current Events” – you will use this list for ALL of your Monday readings. Do NOT create new lists for this assignment or you may not receive credit for completing the assignment.

b) Record the essay/article bibliographic information

3) Create an essay/article ANNOTATION that includes the following:

a) MAIN IDEAS: Short statement of the main ideas/arguments of the article (2-3 sentences)

b) EVIDENCE: 2-3 bulleted facts or pieces of evidence used in the text to support the main idea

c) QUOTATIONS/STATEMENTS: List at least 1 interesting, controversial, or provocative statement or quotation which the author makes or sources he/she quotes. Select statements or quotations which you think will make good discussion material for the class.

d) CONNECTIONS: Briefly discuss how this article/essay connects to other texts or topics we have discussed in class. Consider looking for essays/articles that connect to our major topics: American culture/society, Language, Family, Education, Gender, Equal Opportunity/Race, as well as other important topics concerning Politics, Religion, Economics, etc.

4) Bring a copy of the article to class and be prepared to present the article to the class and lead the discussion. We probably will not have time to discuss all of the articles, but we will discuss as many as possible.

Grading: 10 points. One-half of the grade will come from the written bibliographic information and annotation. The other half of the grade will come from your “presentation” of the article to the class. Due to time, we will not be able to get to everyone, nor will we discuss articles every Monday. In any case, you are expected to be prepared every Monday with your article and presentation.

Magazine & Newspaper List (suggested list of sources; be sure to selected QUALITY sources)