Venezuela’s Economic Struggle

The article “Venezuela crisis: Why Chavez’s followers are standing by Maduro” is discussing the power shift and economic struggle that is occurring in Venezuela right now. It states the although Chavez passed away nearly a decade ago, the people of Venezuela still follow him because of his revolutionary ideas that liberated the country. He stood for social equality and justice, and now some people fear that his replacement will no hold true to those ideas. This is important to pay attention to, because the American military is now involved down there and Venezuelan people are coming to the U.S. as refugees.

The content standards that this article and activity connect with are the second, “Content Standard 2 — Students analyze how people create and change structures of power, authority, and governance to understand the operation of government and to demonstrate civic responsibility,” and the sixth, “ Content Standard 6 — Students demonstrate an understanding of the impact of human interaction and cultural diversity on societies.” The Grand Challenge that this connects to is “Valuing World Cultures.” After Reading this article I could see students asking questions like, “What form of government did Chavez support?” or “How is Maduro destroying Chavez’s legacy?” or “Why did the United States get involved with this?” The routine that this activity is centered around is directed reading-thinking activity from our 50 Routines book. I think this routine will get students thinking about America’s involvement in foreign affairs, the differences between their lives and the lives of the Venezuelans and the importance of national leadership.

For this activity I would use the worksheet on page 25 of the 50 Routines book. First I would read through the article with the entire class to make sure they understand all the vocab and what’s happening in it. Then I would hand out the worksheet and explain to the student how to it out. It has a space for prediction questions that the students have, and then one open box for predictions using background knowledge before they start reading, three boxes for notes while they’re reading and then one box to summarize the article and reflect on their predictions.