Current Events Journal #3

12/11/11

Bailey Levy 802

Current Events Journal #3

Title: Animal shelter's behavior experts face life and death decisions for animals

Author: John Owens

Source: The Miami Herald

Topic: The topic of this article is animal shelter’s decisions.

Main Idea (Implied/Stated): The main idea of this article is Animal shelter's behavior experts face life and death decisions for animals. It is stated because it is clearly written in the text.

Author’s Purpose: The author’s purpose for writing this article is to inform readers about how shelters make decisions about if animals should be put up for adoption or put to death based on their behavior.

Author’s Perspective: The author’s perspective in this article is subjective because the author makes the reader feel ad for the animals and puts his opinion in the article.

Pattern of Organization: The pattern of organization of the article is both cause and effect and process order.

-The reason the author chose these patterns for the article is to help the reader see the order on how the shelter decides whether or not to put the animal to sleep and the causes of why they would do so.

Text Features: The texts features included in this article are title, quotations, and a date. The title helps by giving the readers a little hint on what the article is about, the quotes help by telling readers what people think about the topic and their feelings, and the date tells the readers when this article was published.

Summary (in your own words): The article is about how pets like Yokie, must be put through a lot of tests so shelters can decide if they should be put up for adoption, or put to sleep.

Importance: The significance of this article is to teach readers that many pets aren’t always put up for adoption and that some are actually put to sleep because of their behaviors toward people and other animals.

What I Learned: What I learned from this article is that pets are sometimes put to sleep because they do not behave well with other people and animals.

What I Liked: What I liked about this article was that the author included a real pet as an example. Although it was extremely sad, I liked how the author included information about Yokie. 

What I Disliked: What I did not like about this article was that there were no pictures to help me visualize things. It would have been better to include a picture of a dog, for example, Yokie.

Recommendations: I would recommend this article to anyone thinking about adopting a pet or anyone who owns a pet.

Text-to-Self Connections: This article reminded me of the time I had to put my dog to sleep because he had a heart condition.

Text-to-Text Connections: This article reminded me of the book, Marley and Me, because in the book, Marley is put to sleep by a shelter.

Text-to-World Connections: This article reminded me of the world because this was shelters do this to animals all over the world.

Vocabulary:

Word	Context Clues	Meaning
1. Euthanized	I used context clue #1 (definition or restatement). The meaning of the word was in the sentence.	Put to sleep
2. Advocacy	I used context clue #5 (infer). The sentence states that the people at the shelter understand the stress of the animal and that they must have some sort of advocacy. I inferred that it meant motivation or support.	Motivation; support
3. Euthanasia	I used context clue #5 (infer). I knew that “euthanized” meant to put to sleep, so I inferred that euthanasia was the act of putting something to sleep or the state of something being put to sleep.	The act of putting something to sleep; the state of something being put to sleep