June 17

Social 33

Part A of the Diploma Exam is now behind you. If you want to write some practice Part B Exams, come on in to see me. Please remember that Part B of your Diploma Exam is on June 26th at 9:00-11:30 a.m.in the Main Gym. you're not allowed a dictionary or a thesaurus for this one! Keep studying! You're NOT finished yet!

Social 10

I have posted your final grades in Social 10-1 in the hall just outside my classroom by ID number. Overall, I'd have to say that you did really well as a class on Part B of the Final Exam (the class average was 76%). Some of you, individually, did really well on the Part B, whereas there were a few failures on the test. If your final grade fell below 50% it was rounded down to 45% as per Social Studies Department policy. If this is the case, you will be required to take Social 20-2 next year. When you pass Social 20-2 you will receive retroactive credits for Social 10-1, in other words, you get 10 credits for passing Social 20-2. If your final grade falls between 50-65%, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you enroll in Social Studies 20-2 next year, you will enjoy greater academic success in the Social 20-2 stream. I would just like to say that I really enjoyed teaching all of you this semester, hopefully, you will have me again down the road in Social 20-1 or Social 30-1 or 30-2. Have a fantastic summer!!

June 11

Social 10-1 Students: Please hand in your textbooks today!

Where's Mr. G?

I posted the times that you can find me at school over the next few days just outside my classroom. I'm in either R4 or Room 108 tomorrow between 8:30 and 3:30 (keeping in mind that I will probably be out for lunch at the noon hour), and on Friday from 9:30 to 2:30. I posted your course marks going into the final exam in my classroom as well.

Social 10

We played a review game for part of the class period today. Please use the study guide that I gave you in class to focus your review. If you have any questions please feel free to post them here in the comments section. I wish you all the best on Part B of the Final Exam (100 multiple choice questions), I created it, so you know that it will be a tough, but fair test. Your Final Exam is Monday, June 16th from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. in the Main Gym. Please study hard!! Let's see if you can beat last semester's class average on the Final. It was an absolute pleasure teaching you all this semester. Hopefully you learned a lot, and maybe had a few laughs along the way.

Social 33

I went through some more of the Social 33 Review PowerPoint. I will be sending this to you today, so please check your e-mail inboxes. Please remember that your Part A (written part) of your Diploma Exam is on Monday, June 16th from 9:00-11:30 a.m. Part B is on June 26th from 9:00-11:30 a.m. (multiple choice part) in the Main Gym. Please study hard!! It was a pleasure teaching you this semester. We had some fun I think, and I think that you learned as well. We'll see, but I seriously think a couple of you have a shot at getting 100% on the Diploma, especially if you prepare for it. Good luck to you all!

June 10

Social 33

I continued working my way through the Social 33 Review PowerPoint presentation. I will pick it up tomorrow with the Cold War. I also gave you a handout today that had scrambled key terms from Topic A and Topic B, I will be posting the answers to that review booklet tomorrow here on the blog. Tomorrow is our last period together, and it will be shortened by 15 minutes due to locker clean-out. I'll try to get through as much as possible of the remaining topics in the presentation. Don't worry, I will be sending it to you by e-mail.

Social 10

I posted the marks in the course up to this point. I put up the term marks (which amounts to 75% of your overall mark in Social 10-1), and the results of the Part A of your Final Exam (marked out of 15, 15% of your Final Exam mark, the 100 multiple choice question test makes up the other 85%). We played a game of Jeopardy to review for the Final Exam.

June 9

Social 10

Most of this class period was spent writing Part A of the Social 10-1 Final Exam. I hope that you felt that you were prepared for the topic that was in this Part A in-class writing assignment. You certainly as a group wrote a lot of these assignments over the course of the semester. I have finished marking them, and you will be getting these results back tomorrow in class. Notice how I wrote, "getting the results back", you will not be given this piece of writing back. You're more than welcome to come in on Thursday or Friday this week to have a look at my comments on the Part A, but you will not be allowed to take it home because it is a secured final exam. We will be playing a review game of Jeopardy tomorrow, so please come prepared, study, do a little review tonight, so you're not "weakest link" on your team. (hmmm, that's another game show...)

Social 33

I started going through the review PowerPoint for the Social 33 course. I'll continue to do this tomorrow as well. We'll probably (hopefully) finish up with this on Wednesday. I will send this presentation out on Wednesday. If you're looking for some extra review and have access to a school computer (say during a spare), you could go to a test that I made up from released Diploma exam questions. It's on the X-drive, which you have access to. Have a look at the picture below to figure out how to get to it.

June 5

Social 33

Most of this class period was spent writing your Contemporary World Test. I also gave you a writing assignment that is based on the candidate style question that you might see on the Diploma Exam Part A. I gave you some time after the test to write some ideas down on the topic that the candidates were discussing. We'll talk about it on Monday.

Social 10

I gave you back the results of the Unit 4 Final Exam and your Unit 4 Part A In-Class Writing Assignment at the beginning of class today. I went through the study guide for the Final Exam as well. You have a homework assignment for this weekend: please send me 5 Jeopardy style questions and answers, 2 short answer questions, 1 list-style question, and 5 multiple choice questions. We will be playing two review games on the last two days of classes. We'll be playing Jeopardy on Tuesday, June 10th, and another review game on Wednesday, June 11th. Not a bad way to end a semester.

June 4

Social 10

Most of this class period was spent writing your Unit 4 Final Exam and the Unit 4 Part A In-Class Writing Assignment. Please remember that you have your Part A of your Final Exam on Monday, June 9th. You should be reviewing the course content between now and then.

Social 33

I went over the answers to a couple of worksheets, the first one was The Superpowers in the Middle East worksheet, and the other one was on major economic organizations in the 1990s. I then went through a talk on the Diploma Part A Final Exam. I have sent this presentation to you already. I would like you to take a stab at writing an answer for the "candidate question" that is in the presentation. We'll probably have time to talk about it tomorrow after you write your Contemporary World Test.

June 3

Social 33

I went through the study guide for Thursday's Contemporary World Test. This test will be 50 multiple choice questions with no writing assignment. I went through some important links that I've put up under Social 33 Links as well, please check the last three hyperlinks under Social 33 Links, they will be really useful to you as you prepare for your Diploma Exam. I then gave you a handout labelled "Contemporary World" that contained lots of key organizations and concepts that you need to know for Thursday's test and ultimately, your Diploma Exam. Also, I gave you a handout that you had to complete on major economic organizations in the world today. No homework tonight, but you should be studying and preparing for that test on Thursday, please check yesterday's post for the study guide.

Social 10

For most of the period today I showed you three excerpts from a video called "Where is the World Going, Mr. Stiglitz?" Was this video challenging to understand? Absolutely, but I think it will benefit you to have listened to this video. Tomorrow you have your Unit 4 Final Exam, which consists of 30 multiple choice questions and a Part A In-Class Writing Assignment. You won't be able to do any brainstorming in small groups before writing the Part A unfortunately. Please budget your time accordingly.

Joseph E. Stiglitz

June 2

Welcome to June, not too many classes left!

Social 10

I showed you a video on the controversy surrounding the Kyoto Accord. With the Kyoto Accord, the main goal was the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, this led into a presentation/lecture on biofuels, mainly corn and sugar cane ethanol. I then showed you a map on the impact of rising food prices around the world, and one of the contributing factors in rising food prices is the use of fields to grow biofuel crops, do you see how all of those concepts tied together? Here is a link to the map that I showed you in class. Please remember that you have your Unit 4 Final Exam on Wednesday. It consists of a multiple choice test and a Part A in-class writing assignment. Make sure that you know all of the key concepts in Unit 4, and that you have read all of the Chapters 15-19 in Perspectives on Globalization, and have studied the presentations from this unit.

Social 33

I went through the timeline of key events in the 1990s, and I also went through the Middle East conflict (briefly). On Thursday, you will have a test on the Contemporary World section of the Social 33 course. I have some good news: there will not be a writing assignment for this test, instead it will be 50 multiple choice questions. Please make sure that you know the following concepts:

• NAFTA
• EU
• GATT
• WTO
• United Nations
• General Assembly
• Security Council
• World Court
• Secretariat
• sovereignty
• Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda: what were UN actions in these countries?
• breakup of the USSR
• Greenpeace
• Amnesty International
• UN involvement in Bosnia
• Canada's membership in international organizations
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• internationalism vs. nationalism
• collective security
• WHO
• Persian Gulf War
• NORAD
• deterrence
• isolationism
• containment
• appeasement
• interdependence
• detente
• economic globalization
• human rights