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: Race to Secure Arctic Riches Heats Up, 09/10/07
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec07/arctic_9-10.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Where is the Arctic?

2. Is it a country? Whom does it belong to?

3. What are some of ways global warming is affecting our oceans?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What role does global warming play in the race for Arctic territory?

Northern countries are racing to claim areas of the potentially oil-rich Arctic seabed, which could become more accessible as global warming melts the polar ice caps.

2. What is the basis for Russia's claim to a large portion of the Arctic seabed?

Russia claims that nearly 500,000 square miles of the seabed, including the north pole, are connected to the country through underwater mountain ridges.

3. What did Russia do that angered other northern countries?

In a well-publicized stunt, a Russian submarine dropped a tricolor flag cast in titanium onto the seabed below the north pole last month to reinforce its claim, a move that was not well-received by other countries.

4. How did Denmark react to the Russians?

Denmark launched its own research expedition, hoping to prove one of the underwater mountain ridges Russia claimed is actually linked to the Danish territory of Greenland.

5. Why could the Arctic become more economically important?

Melting ice could open areas up for drilling, though some scientists say that won't be a possibility for many years.

The areas could prove profitable in other ways, though, as the melting ice opens up shipping passages.

6. What is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea?

The Law of the Sea allows governments an economic zone of up to 200 nautical miles from their shores, in which the country has exclusive rights to resources.

Countries must prove with scientific evidence and mapping any other claims to land connected to the continental shelf, the underwater land that slopes down from the countries' coasts.

7. How were disputes over Antarctica settled?

Twelve nations, including the United States, Russia, Australia and Argentina, signed an agreement to devote the continent to international science.

The treaty formed a legal framework for nations' actions there. It set out that the land would be used for peaceful purposes only, and did not recognize the territorial claims.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Should nations be allowed to claim parts of the Arctic? Why or why not? On what basis should countries be able to make a claim?

2. In the article, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said "This isn't the 15th century, you can't go around the world and just plant flags and say, 'We're claiming this territory.'" What do you think of this quote? How is this race to claim the Arctic similar to earlier expansionism? How is it different?

3. Research recent political activities in Russia. What's going on there? What political reasons might the Russian government have to make a claim on the Arctic at this time?

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