STEP 1: Find a current news event article about politics, voting, or political leadership. Look specifically for an article that covers information related to concepts you learned about in this module, including power, authority, political systems, voting, or theoretical perspectives on government. You won’t want to search for these specific terms using Google, but should instead peruse headline news or political sections and read through several articles.
The article you choose should be a minimum of 500 words, recent (within three weeks), and from a reputable news source (many colleges provide free access to national news sources).
STEP 2: Write a thorough summary of the article.
STEP 3: Using your sociological imagination, write an analysis of the article that connects the main idea/s of the article to specific key terms and theories from this module on government and politics.
STEP 4: Include the link to your article, check for any writing errors, and submit your article with your response paper.
Rubric
| High Quality | Proficient | Approaching Proficiency | Not Proficient | Points |
| The article chosen is recent, relevant, and reputable. | The article missing 1 of the requirements (recent, relevant, and reputable) | The article is missing 2 of the requirements. | The article is missing the requirements. | __/3 |
| Summary is succinct, thorough, original, and accurate. | Summary is missing 1 of the requirements (succinct, thorough, original and accurate). | Summary is missing 2 of the requirements. | Summary is missing 3 or 4 of the requirements. | __/6 |
| Analysis clearly relates the article content from the article to key terms from this module on government and politics. | Analysis includes one or more key terms but does not provide a clear link to the article and/or does not use the term with 100% accuracy. | Analysis includes a key term without proper connection to the article and/or misuses the term. | Analysis does not include key terms from Module 6 and/or uses key terms incorrectly. | __/7 |
| College-level writing grammar (spelling, punctuation, syntax, etc.) with 0-1 error. | College-level writing with 2-3 grammatical errors. | College-level writing with 3-4 grammatical errors. | College-level writing with 5+ grammatical errors. | __/4 |
| Total: | __/20 |
