Step 1: After  the class brainstorming session, you will get into small groups (maximum of 3), according to interst in the contemporary issue of your choice.

Step 2:  Divide your group members into specific roles:
        -Devil’s Advocate –be ready to challenge everything
Taking on this role means that you must pull yourself back and become an expert on both sides of the situation.  How did each side act or react?
        -Criminal Mastermind –what brought this issue on?
What environmental factors –societal, cultural and physical—led to this event/issue? Don’t forget: these factors may be different for each side.  Can you find parallels to those factors that contributed to the Salem Witch Trials in “The Crucible”?
        -Artist –put it all together to impress those editors!
While your main goal is to create an aesthetically pleasing project, you must participate in the research so you know how best to present it –what order and what medium.  You will work alongside the Devil’s Advocate.
           
        In the event that there are only two people for one issue, they will work together as artists to create a creative and original product and presentation.
        Although you have individual roles, you are expected to work together as a cohesive unit to convince the editors that yours is the one they should choose for their next issue.

Step 3: Go research! Look at the Resources page to get started.

Step 4: Now that you know your issue inside out, you have to choose a side and defend it.  You must know both sides because you will be questioned from a wide range of people.  Your project must incorporate both sides, but defend one.

Step 5: Create your product.  Use the Evaluation page, which contains the rubrics, as a guide.

Step 6: Your group will now present the project (rubric for the oral presentation on the Evaluation page).  Remember: be prepared to be showered with questions.

Step 7: Yes, there is one final piece.  This will complete the “L” portion of those KWL worksheets you began a couple weeks ago.  Every student must write a follow-up write-up reflecting on your research, what the final project and working a group was like, and, most importantly, what you have learned since the beginning of the unit.  Did you learn what you wanted to as you put in that middle column?  This will be posted on the class wiki.