World Issues Project (10th Grade Benchmark)

•    The World Issues Project benchmark is a shared English and Social Science curriculum designed to refine the research and writing skills students learned during the Change Project, while simultaneously introducing them to several significant problems which are facing our global community today.  
 
•    Over the course of this project, students will be randomly assigned a world issue. Each student will then become an expert on that assigned global issue, as well as the impact of that issue on the global community. 
 
•    Students will begin the process by creating an infographic that displays key facts about their assigned issue, including who is affected, and where the issue is most prevalent, as well as why the issue is a factor in global affairs. 
 
•    Throughout semester one, students will develop their initial research with additional sources, culminating in a research paper which will prepare them for the Socratic seminar. The Socratic seminar is an opportunity for students to discuss their findings so far with others who have been assigned the same issue, and gain insight from others' research. 
 
•    Armed with this knowledge, in semester two students will move to the final phase of the project. They will create a paper comparing two different approaches to improving the issue, backed by their research (including international sources).  The project concludes with a second Socratic discussion with students covering the same issue, where students will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of addressing their assigned global issue.