APES in the News Scrapbook Project 2015-2016

PURPOSE: One of the important goals of science education at the high school level is to help students learn how to make good decisions about public issues. Scientific information is disseminated to the public through a variety of media, including newspapers, magazines, radio/TV broadcasting, internet etc… For this project you will collect, read, and evaluate newspaper and news magazine articles throughout the year.

A. THE COLLECTION: You must collect a given number of news articles. The intention of this assignment is that you will be continuously researching topics related to the class. Therefore, articles and their summaries will be checked and stamped every Wednesday (see schedule below). You are expected to have an article/summary for the majority of these checks. Each selected article must meet the following criteria in order to earn a stamp:

 Articles must be relevant (about or related to some aspect of environmental science – climate change, mining, land use, environmental issues, ecology, biodiversity, etc…). An article may be related to a previous or upcoming topic; it does not need to correspond with the current topic on that given week.  Articles must be at least 500 words in length and be selected from reliable news sources.  Articles must be current (published within the last two years).  Articles must be neat and legible.  Each article must be summarized briefly on a 3x5 card that is also affixed to the page  Each article must have an MLA citation (on the original article or summary notecard)

Each article must be stamped on an article check date (see below) for credit at the end of the semester.

Article check dates: 1st semester: 9/30, 10/7, 10/14, 10/21, 10/28, 11/4, 11/10*, 11/18, 11/25, 12/2, 12/9, 12/16, 1/6, 1/13, 1/20, 1/27. 2nd semester: 2/3, 2/10, 2/24, 3/2, 3/9, 3/16, 3/23, 3/30, 4/6, 4/20, 4/27, 5/4, 5/11, 5/18, 5/25, 6/1, 6/8.

B. THE ANALYSIS: Once all your articles have been collected, you must create a scrapbook that organizes the articles into a portfolio of stories. Neatness counts! This scrapbook must have the following features:

 Title Page - Give your scrapbook a title that reflects something about the project.  Organization – Your scrapbook must be organized in some topical manner (not chronological or by source). This scheme need not be explained, but ought to be obvious. You must include a “table of contents” that demonstrates your organizational plan.  You must select three articles that you found the most interesting and write 1-2 pages on what you learned from them and why they interested you. These should not merely restate the article content.  Scrapbooks will be turned in on or before June 10th.

C. THE GRADE: Provided that you adequately meet the above criteria, your grade will be determined by the number of stamped articles that you have collected throughout the semester. This project is worth 400 points. 200 of the points will come from the articles themselves (100 points each semester) and the other 200 points will be for the scrapbook (second semester only).

ARTICLES SCRAPBOOK

Less than three articles = 0 points Title page = 10 points 3- 4 articles = 50 points Table of contents = 10 points 5-6 articles = 60 points Organization = 50 points 7-9 articles = 70 points Neatness, presentation = 40 points 10-11 articles = 80 points 1-2 page article discussions = 90 points 12 articles = 100 points (30 points per paper) >12 = 5 extra points each (up to 20)