May 31

IB 20

You wrote your Paper 2 on Authoritarian and Single-Party States today in class. For your IB Exam next year, you'll have to be able to write this type of essay in 45 minutes. After the Paper 2 exam, we started watching a video called "Understanding Canadian Government". We'll continue with this video on Monday. Enjoy your long weekend!

IB 30/35

You wrote your Economics Final Exam today, and the results were very good! You'll learn how you did on Monday. For this weekend make sure that you keep studying Unit 3 material. Check the wiki for Unit 3 materials (PowerPoints and handouts). Also on the wiki please check out the section entitled Diploma Exam Review. I put a Social 30-1 Diploma Exam Study Guide there (it's about 9 pages) and a detailed chart that compares the old Social 30 essay prompts to the new Social 30-1 essay prompt. I have a theory that they are recycling old prompts for the quotes that appear in the new 30-1 prompts. It's worth a look anyway. You will be writing more "weekly quizzes" next week along with a Political Systems Exam and a Trial Diploma Exam.

The text-based source for the WRA II is written "in-house" by test-makers in Edmonton. In other words, they don't quote famous people like Aristotle, Kennedy, Gorbachev or Reagan. The text-based source would look something like this:

• "Rights and freedoms are essential to a democracy; however, there may be times when a temporary suspension of rights and freedoms is necessary to guarantee the preservation of democracy."   (January 2010 WRA II essay prompt)
• "No country should seek to extend its policy over any other country or people; rather, every country should be left free to pursue its own goals. Every country should be unrestricted, secure, and confident in pursuing these goals, regardless of the country’s size or strength." (January 2011, WRA II essay prompt)
• "Society achieves its finest expression through the self-interest and freedom of individuals. When we adopt these principles, we will lessen the need for government to interfere in our lives." (January 2012, WRA II essay prompt)

Remember, the essay question itself NEVER changes from semester to semester, the text-based source does. The essay question is always: To what extent should we embrace the ideological perspectives in the source?

I will see you at the Graduation ceremony tomorrow, and the banquet as well. Please be safe on Friday!

Please bring a photo of yourself to class next week. I'm going to start making a keepsake book for my IB classes from year to year, so you get to be the first group in it! We'll take a class photo next week so I can put that in the book too.