Earth to Class

Alice Kasten
Science Consultant
McDougal Littell

FORMAT FOR NEWSPAPER ARTICLE WRITE-UP

One of my goals this year is to convince you that the science that you are studying is real. Science is not just something that happens in your textbook; science affects our lives daily. You will be asked to find 2 newspaper articles each month that relate to what you are studying in class. EARTH SCIENCE STUDENTS MUST READ EARTH SCIENCE RELATED ARTICLES. BIO STUDENTS MUST READ BIO ARTICLES. These articles must be news articles - they cannot be letters to the editor, they cannot come from the “Tell me why...” type columns, they cannot be picture captions. They must also be of some length - very short articles will be rejected. You may get the articles from either a print newspaper or an online version. Only articles from the current month will be accepted.

Your aim is to convince me that you have read and understood the entire article. In order to do this, you will follow the format given below. Please include the numbers.

1. Last name of author, first name, title of article in quotation marks, name of newspaper underlined, page(s) of article, date.

2. In one paragraph: What was the author’s purpose for writing the article?

3. Using your own words, list (a,b,c, etc) facts that you learned from the article. There should be at least six facts - and longer articles should have more.

4. What questions are raised by the article? These may be questions the author is asking, or questions that come to your mind as you read the article. They may be factual questions, questions about the author’s method, or any other relevant item that comes to mind. The longer your article, the more questions I will expect to see.

5. How is this information going to affect your attitudes about this subject, and what are you going to do about it?

Now staple the article to the BACK of your looseleaf paper, and hand it in by the last school day of the month. Articles will be accepted any time during the month - but they must be in by the last school day of the month.