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 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: President Outlines 2007 Agenda, 1/24/07
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june07/stateoftheunion_1-24.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is the State of the Union address?

2. What is the purpose of the State of the Union?

3. What does President Bush plan to do this year?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What topics did President Bush focus on in his sixth State of the Union address?

In his sixth State of the Union address Tuesday, President Bush defended his recent troop level increase for Iraq and introduced wide-ranging goals for the military, the environment and health care.

2. When was the first such speech given and what requires the president to give this speech to Congress?

Article II of the Constitution requires the president to deliver a speech that explains the condition of the country. Since 1790, presidents have used the speech to outline the executive branch's goals for the coming year.

3. Name two new challenges for the president faces at the time of the speech.

But Tuesday's address came with new challenges for the president: His job approval rating is as low as it has been at the time of any State of the Union address -- 33 percent, according to an ABC News-Washington Post poll -- and for the first time in his presidency, Mr. Bush found himself delivering his address to a Congress with a Democratic majority.

4. What recent policy move did the president spend much of his speech time defending?

The president spent much of the 49-minute speech defending his new Iraq policy -- outlined two weeks ago -- in which he called for the deployment of 21,500 additional U.S. troops.

5. The president asked to increase the size of the military. How will it be increased?

The president also asked Congress to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 -- about 15 percent -- and establish a volunteer reserve corps along side the military reserve to aid in the "war on terror."

6. How is President Bush proposing to stop the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles?

Showing concern for the projected increase in greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, Mr. Bush called for a 20 percent decrease in gas use by 2017, along with an increase in supply of cleaner fuels and alternative fuels such as ethanol, fuel-cell batteries and nuclear power.

7. What is the name of the President's health insurance initiative? And what effect does the White House say it will have?

The White House said these tax cuts, in combination with funds given to state governments under the announced Affordable Choices Initiative would cut the average cost of health insurance in half for uninsured families.

8. Name two foreign policy goals that the president had previously set?

Reminding Americans that foreign policy is "more than a matter of war and diplomacy," the president called for Congress to continue funding the fight against AIDS and malaria in Africa, and to "continue to awaken the conscience of the world to save the people of Darfur."

9. Name the law that aims to increase student achievement and that the president wants Congress to renew.

Mr. Bush also emphasized the renewal of the No Child Left Behind law, which he spearheaded with bipartisan support early in his presidency to increase student achievement, ...

10. The Senate is considering a resolution that would undermine the president's Iraq policy. What would the resolution say?

...the Senate is considering a resolution saying the president's plan is the wrong way forward in Iraq...

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What do you think are the most important issues that the U.S. Congress should be dealing with this year? How closely does your agenda match the president's? Predict which issues the president will be successful in implementing and why.

2. Why is it important for the president to outline his agenda each year in the State of the Union address? Explain your answer.

3. This was President Bush's sixth State of the Union speech. How is it similar or different from those he gave in earlier years? How successful was he in implementing his past agendas?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either 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.