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: India and Pakistan Agree to Talks, 5/05/03
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june03/kashmir_5-05.html

Initiating Questions:

1). What do you know about India and or Pakistan?

2). Where is Kashmir? Why is it significant?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1). When did India sever ties with Pakistan? Why?

India severed all ties between the two countries in December 2001, following a terror attack in its parliament that killed 14 people. India blamed Islamic militants in Pakistan for the attack. Pakistan denied any involvement in the attack.

2). Who are the prime ministers of India and Pakistan? What did they both agree to this week?

Both Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the prime minister of India, and Zafarullah Khan Jamali, the prime minister of Pakistan, have agreed to the first diplomatic talks in two years and will name ambassadors to take up residence in each other's capitals.

3). Why is the world community concerned about the relations between India and Pakistan?

The international community is worried that tensions in the area could lead to nuclear confrontation. Both countries have admitted to nuclear programs since 1998.

4). What is the major problem between the two countries?

The predominantly Muslim border territory of Kashmir, where Islamic militants have been fighting Indian rule for more than 14 years, is the major issue between the two countries. India has accused Pakistan of funding separatists in the region. Pakistan has denied any involvement.

5). What is the most recent violence in the region?

Suspected Muslim militants set off a home-made bomb in a bus-stand in the remote Doda district of Indian Kashmir killing a man and wounding 32 other people, police said. A pro-Indian politician was wounded in another part of the territory when guerrillas lobbed a grenade at his car.

Indian police also said security forces killed six rebels, including two senior members of Kashmir's front line militant group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, in gun battles in the region on Monday.

 

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1). Should India allow Kashmir to be independent or a part of Pakistan? Why or why not?

2). Explain why diplomatic ties are so important between India and Pakistan. What do they have to gain by positive relations with each other?

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.