Saturday, June 09, 2018

June 9

Sorry, I forgot to post on the blog yesterday. Please read the following VERY carefully.


  • Wednesday, June 13th English 30-1 Part "A" (I'm supervising from 11:10 am to 3:10 pm)
  • Thursday, June 14th Social Studies 20-1 (extra time, I'm supervising from 1:00-4:00 pm)
  • Thursday, June 21st Physics 20 (I'm supervising from 8:30 am to 11 am)
What this means: for Social 10-1 and Social 20-1 students, and IB 30/35 students writing the Social Studies 30-1 Diploma Exam, I'm only available in tutorial on Tuesday, June 12th prior to you writing Part B of your Final Exams (Social 10-1 and Social 20-1 students), and Part A of the Diploma (IB students). I'll also make myself available on June 13th from 8:15 am to 10 am. 

It's not a great exam schedule. All Social Studies exams are on the same day: 
  • Social Studies 10-1 Final Exam Part "B" is on Thursday, June 14th (9 am to 11 am)
  • Social Studies 20-1 Final Exam Part "B" is on Thursday, June 14th (1 -3 pm)
  • Social Studies 30-1 Diploma Exam Part "A" is on Thursday, June 14th (9 am to 3 pm)
  • The exception is Social Studies 30-1 Diploma Exam Part "B" is on Friday, June 22nd (9 am to 2 pm)


Please note the dates of your two part Diploma Exam, don't be late! I wanted to highlight a couple of current event topics that could be potential useful for Part A of your Diploma Exam: the recent announcement by the federal government that they would be buying the TransMountain pipeline for $45.5 billion, and the Ontario provincial election results.

How you could potentially incorporate these two case studies in an essay: for the federal government announcement, you could discuss how this is an example of government intervention in the economy (there are two sides here too, some people might see the benefits to the economy of the assurance that despite delays this project will go forward, create jobs, and ultimately lead to oil from Alberta get to the west coast. Others wold argue that this government interference in the economy, and what the federal government should have done was ensure that the delays that the BC provincial government had engaged in were challenged more directly by the federal government. Now, they would argue the Canadian taxpayer will be taking on the burden of this $4.5 billion buyout. To read more about this issue, please have a look at the following links:

For the Ontario provincial election results, this could be used as a criticism of the first past the post system (FPTP) that Canada employs. Elections in Canada at any level (municipal, provincial, and federal) employ the FPTP system. One of the criticisms of FPTP is that it distorts the will of the people, and that the winning political party is over-represented. In case you weren't following this election, here's a quick summary: the Ontario Progressive Conservative party led by Doug Ford won the most seats in the Ontario Provincial Parliament. Here's the breakdown the voting results : 

  • The PCs won 76 seats with 40.5% of the popular vote
  • The NDP won 40 seats with 33.56% of the popular vote
  • The Liberals won 7 seats with 19.59% of the vote
  • The Greens won a seat with 4.6% of the popular vote. 
  • Despite winning 40.5% of the popular vote the PCs will get 61% of the seats in the legislature. Some would argue that 59.5% of Ontarians that cast a ballot in this election voted for a party other than the Progressive Conservatives. 
These kind of election results are not uncommon in Canada. If you want to learn more about this election, please check out the links below:
We played some review games in Kahoot in Friday's class. 

We did pair partner tests on Friday from Unit 4 material. On Monday we'll be in Room 104 playing Kahoot. 



No comments: