Assignment Description

Specific Directions:

Once this semester you will be required to create a summary (post) for a current event and you will also respond weekly to other student's summaries (comments).  The first assignment will be to comment on a post that I made.  In addition, you need to comment on another students' comment.

You will be graded on how relevant and in depth your comment is. Your comment needs to show that you have read the original article, my post and have 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

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 4-6 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 100-175 words

CALENDAR OF POSTS - this is when you are responsible to post to the blog.  McD needs to make you an author, be sure to remind him.  You don't have to comment the week you post.  Your post should either be very current and informative (debates, anything with elections this fall) or very much related to our topic of study.  See McD for inspiration or to check if your topic meets the criteria.

Blog Schedule - Period 4

	Author #1	Author #2	Author #3
9/23	Priya	Hanna	Kaeley
9/30	Henry	Sam Hale	Julia
10/7	Mollie	Sydney	Dylan
10/14	Ivan	Tyler	Chai
10/21	Nick	Jason	Kate
10/28	Gray	Victorya	Kyra
11/4	Taylor	Battat	Ben
11/11	Siobahn	Melissa	Drew
11/18	Fiona	Julian	Justin
12/2	Dominic	Easton	Vina
12/9	Dione	Vienna	Rohan
12/16	Michael	Andre

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.