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: Can New Orleans Be Rebuilt?, 09/19/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/rebuild_9-19.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What happened in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina?

2. Why are people angry about what happened after Katrina?

3. Do you think New Orleans will be rebuilt?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What did President Bush take responsibility for?

In a speech given two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush took responsibility for the slow government response and promised to rebuild the devastated region.

2. What is the first part of the president's plan for rebuilding New Orleans? The second part? The third part?

First, agencies across the federal government are providing immediate aid to the evacuees. While the Department of Health and Human Services sends medical workers to temporary shelters, the Department of Labor is helping evacuees find temporary jobs.

Second, the president proposed that the federal government pay for the rebuilding costs, allowing state and local governments to save their limited funds.

Third, President Bush said he wanted to create programs to bring evacuees home "for the best of reasons -- because they have a real chance at a better life in a place they love."

3. What was the Homestead Act of 1862? Why is it relevant to the discussion about rebuilding New Orleans?

The president proposed an Urban Homesteading Act, a reference to President Lincoln's 1862 Homestead Act which gave land to families willing to settle in the American West, provided they stayed for at least five years.

In President Bush's plan, poor evacuees would be given a plot of land in exchange for promising to build there.

4. How much will the rebuilding effort cost?

The latest estimates put the total at about $200 billion -- as much as the war in Iraq.

5. How does the government spend money when it is in debt?

Even though the government is in debt, it is able to spend money by selling bonds, many of which are bought by foreign countries.

Nations like China and Japan purchase these bonds, in what is essentially a loan to the United States, with the assumption that the U.S. government will pay them back with interest.

6. What will be affected by spending cuts?

"Bridges, roads, parking structures, bike trails" are all budget items that should be cut to pay for Katrina recovery, said Alison Fraser of the Heritage Foundation.

7. What are some of the problems in rebuilding New Orleans?

And even though the broken levees will be fixed and strengthened, geological experts fear that another strong hurricane could cause a repeat of the recent floods.

We need a better plan for a huge storm such as Katrina and a coastal restoration program, said Mark Schleifstein, an environmental reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

"Both of those are very, very expensive propositions that haven't been addressed at all," he added.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. If you were evacuated out of your city and your home and everything you owned was lost, would you want to return? What would be the advantages of starting a new life somewhere else? What would be the disadvantages?

2. The rebuilding of New Orleans will be a long and difficult process. How would you use the money to help reconstruct what used to be a large metropolitan area?

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.