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Current Event Assignment Sheet

Major News Outlets:

Google News

EbscoHost Through the Lancer Library
password & username: lancers


Christian Science Monitor

New York Times

Washington Post

LA Times

State and Local

VC Star

Sacramento Bee
Understanding the important events taking place in our nation is a critical part of understanding our national and local government, therefore you will be required to keep pace with current events as a part of this course.  This means that roughly every two to three weeks you will:
  • keep an eye on the major news outlets and track three important national stories, you will need to print out one article for each of the stories you follow, for a total of three articles (remember: go to the "printer-friendly" version of the article, then copy and paste the text into a Word Document)
  • Make sure that your stories are closely related to the topics we are currently studying (e.g. your first set of articles needed to relate to the Legislative Branch).  While your stories are all about the same major topic (i.e. the Legislative Branch) they should each be about a different subtopic. For example: one article can be about the President and a Supreme Court nomination, the next article can be about the President and his economic plans, and the third article can be about the President and drug enforcement policy.
  • Please choose articles that are in-depth,  not just a summary of the story from a wire service like AP or MarketWatch.  The links on the left will help you find quality articles
  • Please make sure you are choosing stories that have real national news significance, NOT Jamie Lynn Speers, or some random guy driving like a maniac, or whatever
Bring the printouts of your articles to class, where we will complete the following assignment:
  • write a 2-3 paragraph summary for each of the news stories in which you:
    1. identify the important actors and issues at stake
    2. give a brief chronology of events connected to the story, and
    3. offer your opinion on the best possible resolution to the issue
  • The summary needs to be written in your own words, you will receive a zero on this assignment if you copy and paste sentences from the article.
  • Current events are due at the start of the class period.  If you are not here the day they are due you need to e-mail them to me or send them in with a friend.  You will not receive full credit if they are not here on time!