Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: New Leadership in a New Congress, 12/31/02
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec02/frist.html

Initiating Questions:

1). What does it mean to be in control of Congress?

2). What are the three government branches and how do they work together?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1). Who resigned as Senate majority leader? Why? Who will replace him?

Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi resigned on Dec. 20 after losing the support of his colleagues in the wake of his racially insensitive remarks at the 100th birthday party of Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee replaced him.

2). What is the role of the Senate majority leader?

The Senate majority leader is the most important person in the Senate because he or she sets the legislative calendar - deciding what will be discussed and debated in the Senate.

3). Who is Strom Thurmond? Why is he significant?

Sen. Strom Thurmond is a Senator who turned 100 years old in December 2002. He ran for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat on a segregationist platform. Sen. Trent Lott made racially insensitive remarks at Thurmond's birthday that suggested the country would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected president.

4). What decisions may be impacted by the resignation of the Senate majority leader?

The White House may choose not to intervene on behalf of plaintiffs who are challenging the University of Michigan's affirmative action program before the Supreme Court and Charles Pickering, a controversial fifth circuit court of appeals nominee who was not confirmed in March 2002, may not be renominated.

5). What are some of the issues that President Bush would like to promote with his new agenda?

President Bush would like to focus on improving the economy and improving the national defense.

 

Discussion Activity

1). Do you think Sen. Trent Lott should have resigned? Why or why not?

2). What issues would you focus on if you were the Senate majority leader?

Write a 250 to 500-word editorial on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org).