Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature 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 a 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: Who's behind the Violence in Iraq?, 06/12/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/iraq_6-12.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Who are U.S. forces fighting in Iraq?

2. What is guerilla warfare?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What are three types of insurgent groups in Iraq?

Some groups are "former regime elements" -- Sunni Muslims loyal to Saddam's Baath Party, which ruled the country until 2003, who fight for the reestablishment of a Sunni government.

Others groups are tribal leaders who fear a Western-style democracy would take away their power.

Still others are motivated by religious extremism.

2. What is the dominant religious sect in Iraq?

Though the country's population is predominantly Shiite Muslim, the Washington Post reported that 90 percent of the insurgents are Sunni Muslims who lost political power when the United States invaded.

3. What percentage of the insurgents are Sunni Muslims?

Though the country's population is predominantly Shiite Muslim, the Washington Post reported that 90 percent of the insurgents are Sunni Muslims who lost political power when the United States invaded.

4. Where is the Mahdi Army based?

The Mahdi Army is a militant tribal Shiite group based out of Sadr City (near Baghdad) and led by Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose father was the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq before he was assassinated along with two sons in 1999.

5. What is the goal of the insurgent group, Ansar al-Sunnah?

One of the "largest and deadliest" insurgent groups, according to Hashim, is a radical Kurdish group formed in late 2003, Ansar al-Sunnah, determined to create an Islamic state in Iraq.

6. What are the goals of al-Qaida in Iraq?

In a letter to al-Qaida, Zarqawi vowed to expel the United States from Iraq, establish a Sunni Muslim state, and spread conflict to Israel and other countries.

7. What milestone was reached in June?

In June, a milestone for restoring national security was reached when the newly chosen prime minister named new interior and defense ministers.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Can democracy succeed in Iraq? What are the biggest obstacles?

2. What military conflicts have you studied recently? What are similarities and differences between those conflicts and the situation in Iraq?

3. Groups like al-Qaida in Iraq have used the Internet to release statements and publish gruesome videos to promote their cause. Write an essay describing how the insurgent's use of media affects the Iraqi people (Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds) and the Iraqi people's opinion of the U.S. and Iraqi forces of the coalition.

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.