May 3

Social 10-1

We finished watching "The Age of Wal-Mart" video and completed the film study that went along with it. I also showed you some exemplars of the TNC Dossier Assignment from previous semesters. Hopefully these examples gave you some ideas and inspiration. I will try to post the assignment sheet and rubric on the wiki in the next couple of days. The TNC Dossier Assignment is due on Wednesday, May 18th. This is the day after your Unit 3 WRA II.

Social 30-1

I talked a little bit about the Canadian federal election results at the beginning of class. I also did the computer usage request forms for your Diploma Exam at the beginning of class. I went through the structure of the American government and as I lectured you were to take some notes on the diagram. We watched a short video on electoral college system, if you want to watch it again, here is the hyperlink. As we watched this video I stopped it occasionally to point out a few quirks with this system, namely that you can win the popular vote and still not win enough electoral college votes to become president.  I also talked about the 2000 election. In that election Florida was the key state. Previously in class I've talked a little bit about the differences between the types of ballots used in Canada and in the United States. In many counties in Florida during the 2000 election they used what's called a butterfly ballot where you punch holes in the ballot to indicate which candidate you are voting for. I think the following graphic illustrates nicely what this ballot looked like.
I think you can see how this might have caused some confusion. If you can't see the ballot clearly, just click on it and you should see a larger view. If you want to look at past U.S. Presidential elections and see the U.S. electoral college maps for the past ten elections, have a look at Real Clear Politics. Have a look at the 1984 election, that was extremely one-sided!
We also looked at the system of checks and balances in the American presidential system.

Here is a link to the Examples of Students' Writing from the January 2010 Diploma Exam. Obviously, you don't study their responses because the three sources will be different and the text-based source for the WRA II will be different too. But this should give you an idea of the standards for the Diploma.