Current Events Jeopardy

Mabie MUN

AES

This is a fun way that I can make you accountable for staying up on current events and that we can get ourselves in “the know” as we move toward the MUN Conference.

Each game group will be responsible for developing 25 current events questions, divided into five categories, and in order from easy to hard. For example:

Human Rights / Africa / Middle East Crisis / International Relations / Miscellany
For 10 points, whose famous execution recently took place?
- Saddam H.
For 20 points, what is George Bush in the process of proposing for the new year?
- a new plan for the Iraq war
For 30 points, what disaster struck Coloradoa few days ago?
-an avalanch
For 40 points, what were some US Marines recently charged with doing in Hadith, Iraq in 2005?
-killing 24 Iraqis, including women and children.
Fo 50 points, why did hundreds of Somalis storm the streets of Mogadishu last weekend?
- because the government tried to disarm them.

You get the idea. The team that writes the questions for the week will ask them. You need work on clear wording of the questions. The questions need to have a clear, direct answer. The questions also need to be intelligently divided by difficulty. Use commonly accepted publications—those to which students can easily gain access, for example, The Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, Yahoo News, Excite News, CNN, BBC. We will move in a clockwise order. If a question is not answered, other teams raise their hands for a follow-up. The first hand that I see gets to answer. If the response is correct, the points are awarded. If the response is not correct, the points are detracted.

Points and Grades. I am adding an element to Current Events Jeopardy that will, I hope, cause teams to take it more seriously this semester. I will use something that I normally do not for this assignment—norm-referenced grading. Normally at AES, a student is given criteria to fulfill. If he/she accomplishes those criteria, the grade is awarded. With this system, there could conceivably be a class full of As. With norm-referenced grading, your team will be graded in reference to the other groups. So, the team members with the highest point total will earn an A, with the second highest, a B, the third, a C and the lowest, a D. As mentioned before, I will assess the asking team separately.

Schedule:

We will play each Day Five prior to the conference. I will need the categories and questions typed and double spaced on the class before each game. Each game should take no longer than half of a block.The schedule may change as the semester develops, but I will give you plenty of warning if it does.

1) 12 January (topics and questions due 10 January)

______

2) 24 January (topics and questions due 22 January)

______

3) 7 February (topics and questions due 5 February)

______

4) 21 February (topics and questions due 15 February)

______

5) 6 March (topics and questions due 1 March)

______

Improvements:

1) I will assess whether the questions asked make sense, are answerable, and are well-calibrated. The asking team will earn a grade on this.

2) I will time and judge the responses to the questions instead of letting the asking team do this.

3) Grades will be awarded to teams based on point totals.