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: President Signs $15 Billion Emergency AIDS Bill, 5/28/03
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june03/aids_5-28.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What do you know about AIDS?

2. Is there a cure for AIDS?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. How much is the AIDS package and what is the money going towards? Be specific.

The entire $15 billion package directs 55 percent of the aid to treatment programs, 20 percent to prevention programs, 15 percent to palliative care -- care meant to ease AIDS related suffering -- and 10 percent to helping children whose parents have died from the disease, according to a CNN report.

2. According to the Office of National AIDS Policy, how many people suffer from HIV and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean?

In Sub-Saharan Africa more than 25 million people are infected with HIV and AIDS. In the Caribbean, 390,000 people suffer from the virus.

3. How many people in the United States have HIV/AIDS?

In the U.S., about 900,000 people have HIV/AIDS.

4. What do AIDS activists think about the president's plan?

AIDS activists say the president's bill is not enough to meet the need in Africa, and critics of the plan say next year's budget allocates only half the money allotted to fight AIDS.

5. Who is President Bush calling on for support in this fight against AIDS?

Mr. Bush will also call on European countries to join the U.S. in pledging financial support to fight the disease.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Do you agree with President Bush when he says that the U.S. has a moral obligation to help? Why or why not? Explain your answer.

2. Do you think that pharmaceutical companies should provide AIDS medications for free or reduced prices to HIV/AIDS patients around the world? Justify your answer.

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.