GREAT SPEECHES ... oh, and two more sleeps ...

Great job today on all the speeches.  Many achieved a mark of 100%, and no one had less than an overall 80%.  You certainly stepped up to the plate!

A reminder that you essay is due no later than 4pm on Thursday December 17.  You have each signed the contract and know exactly what is expected.  Please see me with any questions or concerns.

Have a great night editing your essays!

Week to do LOTS!

Please remember, as stated in class today, that if you missed the document test last week, it is your responsibility to see me before Christmas break to complete the test.  You will not have an opprtunity to do it during class time.

Peer editing is tomorrow.  Please remember that you need 5 copies of your essay in class.

Have a great night!

Test Today and Speeches

Thank you for working so diligently on your tests.  I am looking forward to marking them!

A reminder about the next two weeks.  Please see the last two posts for dates and information.  Remember that you have LOTS of stuff you can and should work on.  Speech research should be started, first drafts of your essays are needed for peer editing next week.  Ultimate seminars should be prepped if you chose to attend one of them.

PLEASE PLEASE see me with any questions or concerns.

Ultimate Seminar and Upcoming Test

A few updates:

1.  Today in class I handed out the French Revolution Documents and the purple chart.  Please complete this for MONDAY.  You will be able to use both of these, in addition to your text, for your document test NEXT THURSDAY.  If you will be away next Thursday on the Band School Feeder Trip please see me to do your test on WEDNESDAY.

2.  The sign-ups are ongoing for the ultimate seminars on Dec. 7 and 8.  The documents are "Subjection of Women" by John Stuart Mill, and "On Women in the Coal Pits" Parliamentary Papers.  Both documents are in your seminar package.  Please see me to sign up for a date if you are choosing to complete the ultimate seminar.

Have a great weekend ... you have tons to work on, so please take some time this weekend to get some of it done!

Words Words Words

Alrighty, crunch time is coming and organization will be truly required.  I am concerned that you, as a group, have difficulty pushing yourselves when given class time to complete work.  PLEASE use all upcoming time to do the myriad of upcoming assignments.

Here is the plan until December 18:
Nov. 27: French Revolution Documents - read and complete chart
Nov. 30 - Introduction to Napoleon
Dec. 1 - Seminar Rob and Albert
Dec. 2 - Napoleon
Dec. 3 - Speech (give out and research in the library)
Dec. 4 - PD Day
Dec. 7 - Ultimate (alternate seminar0
Dec. 8 - same as above
Dec. 9 - Peer editing day
Dec. 10 - Peer editing day
Dec. 11 - Field Trip
Dec. 14 - Intro to Industrial Revolution
Dec. 15 - PRESENT SPEECHES!
Dec. 16 - Industrial Revolution
Dec. 17 - Same - ESSAYS DUE: FINAL CLOSURE DATE (4:00 pm)
Dec. 18 - PARTY!

Please let me know if I can help with anything!

Parent's Night and Weekly Recap

Thanks to the parents of Eric, Peter, Ben, Zack, Cara and Cindy for joining me at parent's night last night.  If you did not have a chance to attend but would like to chat about your son or daughter, please contact me at kovicha@hdsb.ca.

Seminars were well done this week, and I am happy to see how far you have progressed with your links.  Please remember that you must always draw your ideas back to the documents, and that specific societal links are needed.

Next week, we will have a field trip on Monday, seminar on Tuesday and French Revoltion lessons for the remainder of the week.  To prepare, please watch these remaining videos.
1
2
3
4
5
6

I will see you at 7:30 a.m. for our field trip on Monday!
A reminder that conference sheet #2 and 8-9 pages of research notes are due on WEDNESDAY! 

Have a great weekend.

READ ME!

I have a big concern.  When you sign in on a day you are not participating in a seminar, you should be completing work for this course.  Please do not watch videos like this.  Instead work on your seminars (prep or leading), your essay (conference sheet #2 and 8-9 pages of research notes due next week!) etc.

PLEASE DO NOT BRING FOOD INTO THE LIBRARY.
PLEASE DO NOT MAKE A HUGE RUCKUS IN THE LIBRARY.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE WORK ON YOUR CLASS ASSIGNMENTS.

That being said, here are the weekly updates:
Wednesday: 
Tons of French Revolution notes, info and discussion.
Thursday: 
First half of period: Kelly's seminar.  You MUST attend if you were scheduled on the original day.
Second half of period: Malcolm and Peter's seminar.  Again, you MUST attend if you were scheduled on the original day.
Friday: TBD (dependent on Caine feeling better).

REMINDER:
Conference sheet #2 and 8-9 pages of research notes are due next Wednesday (Nov. 25).
Permission forms for the field trips are due on Thursday.

PLEASE see me with any questions or concerns.

I'm Talking About a Revolution ...

We started this week talking about the main ideas of revolution. Your A-Z ideas of what revolution is, where is comes from and how we deal with it were great! Thank you for realizing so early on that revolution does not always mean war and guns and death, but that we are constantly in the middle of a revolution. In this way, we identified technology as the biggest revolution we are in right now.
I appreciated your comments about the 4 songs we looked at that deal with revolution. We listened to "Woman in the Wall", "We Didn't Start the Fire", "Only You" and "The Gulf War Song." I've linked the songs to their titles. Click and enjoy!

Today we started off by dividing the country, then the province, then our town, into 5 groups. I found it very interesting to see how you divide groups; through race, economics, geographic locations etc. This idea lead us into the lecture on the Old Regime, and how France was divided into 3 Estates prior to the revolution.

After that, we all got to COMPLAIN! As you wrote your complaints and you posted them in the room, I was thankful to see that you complain about food, and not that you didn't have any. I was thankful that you complained about school, and not that you didn't have one to attend. And I was thankful that you complained about the Leafs, because I too want them to win!

Tomorrow we will continue with the French Revolution lecture, the seminar is on Thursday and PD Day on Friday.

Please remember to wear your poppy tp school tomorrow, and attend the Remembrance Day ceremony with your friends. Eric will be speaking at the ceremony and I would like to see you all there to support him.

BOO!

Happy Hallowe'en! Have a great night, and be safe if you are going out! Enjoy!

Plan for next week

Thank you for working so well this week with the variety of supply teachers you have had. I am on the mend, and am looking forward seeing you all on Monday.

Monday: test review, absolutism review, seminar group from this week to hand in pre-seminar questions
Tuesday: Seminar (Dylan and Kelly)
Wednesday: test (quiz)
Thursday: Seminar that was to be on Tuesday
Friday: Conference #2, with everyone, 3-4 pages handwritten notes handed in (annotated bibs will be evaluated at the same time).

See you Monday ... continue working on your essay steps!

My Apologies

Sorry about today. My sincere apologies to Kelly and Dylan who were to lead the seminars today. Please plan on attending seminars on Thursday. In class tomorrow, we will complete review for the unit test.

Sick at home ... bonus day for you!

I am sorry I am not there to go over the philosophes work you did on Friday. We will review that information on Wednesday, and push the test to Thursday. Please let me know if you will not be in class on Thursday.

Consider this a bonus day for your seminar and essay. To this date everyone has had between 3-4 days of essay and seminar time, in addition to the two days we spent in the library in September. I expect that many annotated bibliographies will be waiting for me when I return! :)

Your step 3 of the essay (3-4 pages handwritten notes and conference sheet #2) is due next week. I will be meeting with everyone on either Nov. 5 or 6. That will be two more days for your seminar and essay ... so please be prepared to work.

Seminars will run as scheduled tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Absolute Poker and Seminar 1

My sincere congrats go out to Cara, Nicole, Harry and Sean for leading two excellent seminars today. Great questions were asked, and wonderful discussion was brought up. I am impressed at this calibre of seminar already, and I am certain that there are great things to come!

Absolte poker was a great time, and congrats to King Kevin for being our absolute winner. Great hands were played by many. It was fantastic to see just how easily the fortunes of entire kingdoms could change and the drop of a card.

Our continuing discussion of absolutism will lead us to engage in a lecture, a reading and some review notes over the next few days. We will plan our unit test date tomorrow in class.

Eric ... we hope you feel better soon!

Absolutism: What you need to be king

Great work from our kings and their advisors. I was particulary impressed that you all chose to be loyal to your countries! This kind of loyalty will come into play next week when we play "Kingly Poker".

A reminder that your annotated bibliographies are due tomorrow, Oct 16th. It is the date you decided on as a class, and as a result, I am looking forward to receiving them!

Cara, Nicole, Harry and Sean ... WHERE ARE YOUR PRE-SEMINAR QUESTIONS? I need them in my mailbox before 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning so I can photocopy them for your participants.

For Monday ... please remember to bring 20 pennies (not 20 cents in any other form) for poker. Each kingdom will only have as much money as their inhabitants bring!

Please continue to work on your seminar, essay and follow the calendar to make sure you know when you are participating in the seminar.

Enjoy!

The Enlightenment and 3 Minute Philosophies

Don't you love Galileo as seen through the eyes of the 3 minute philosophy! There are several more. You can go to othieves.com to enjoy them all!

We will finish the "Changes In" lecture and note tomorrow.

Lives Lived were due today ... please get them in!

Introduction to the Enlightenment

I thoroughly enjoyed your personal philosophies today. I was "enlightened" (!) by your words and by the inspirational artists behind many of your choices. We'll look at them again this week.

We watched the BBC documentary, Racism: The Coulour of Money, parts one and two, from Youtube today. I have read your exit cards, and really enjoyed how different your thoughts are about whether the ideas of slavery, biology, capitalism (etc) helped or hindered the enlightenment. We'll start the class tomorrow by looking at your exit cards, and in small groups, see if you agree or disagree with each other.

A reminder that two of you, Sean and Malcolm, have not handed in Processfolio Step one for your essay. Please do that asap.

For everyone else, you should be working on your annotated bibliographies. Please see me if you have any questions.

I look forward to our small group discussions tomorrow, the clip of Amistad we will watch, and the newest document we will read.

Enjoy!

Seminars: Emerging Mental Prowess!

Thank you for your patience today when I was handing out and explaining the seminar package. Please don't hesitate to ask any questions as we are continuing to divide up the work tomorrow.

Remember to bring your seminar document package to school tomorrow and your agenda, so that we can figure out which documents you choose to discuss and which day you will present and which days you will participate! Phew ... a lot of stuff came down the pipeline today!

A reminder for the Machiavelli seminars next week, here is the schedule:
Tuesday Sept 29
Cindy, Nicole, Cam. Cara, Kyle, Dylan, Lindsay

Wed. Sept 30:
Albert, Caitlin, Zack, Kelly, Caine, Malcolm, Kevin, Peter

Thurs. Oct. 1:
Jessica, Ben, Sean, Rob, Eric, Luke, Michael

Homework: Continue to work on your Lives Lived assignment.

Document Introduction

Great work on the documents today. Just a reminder, the questions you must have answered for Monday, in relation to your document are:
1. Identify the problem the author is addressing.
2. What is the subject of the document?
3. What solution does the uthor give?
4. What bias does the author have?

The Lives Lived project was handed out. Due date that was decided on by you is Thursday October 8.

Volleyball players ... I hope you had a great time at your tournament! Please remember to get the assignment from me on Monday.

Enjoy the weekend!

The Reformation: "Chipping" away

Great answers with the chip game. Reformation seems to be well understood. Please let me know if you have any concerns. Cause and Effect graphic organizer was well presented. Keep the words indulgences and primogeniture, and the importance of the printing press in mind.

No homework ... but be warned ... it is coming!

The Reformation and why we dance

After watching the evolution of dance (thank you Youtube.com!) we discussed why we dance and why does dance evolve. That began our discussion on major changes in society ... and this class was all about religion and the Catholic Church.

Your notes that you took during my lecture on the political/social/economic transformations of Europe from 1350-1600 (approx) looked good. Please remember to review your notes tonight, and let me know if you have any questions tomorrow.

Martin Luther was presented today (powerpoint). What do you think of INDULGENCES?!? What a great way to get money! We will complete the chart tomorrow, so please remember to bring it to class.

Enjoy your night!

The Day of Dance

I am so proud of you guys! Without any prodding, pushing or bribing on my part 100% of you participated in Adson's Sarabond dance. HOW GOOD ARE YOU!!!! Albert, first day in the class ... way to go! Eric, Malcolm ... leadership dance abilities I never knew you had! And ladies, you should be proud of keeping yourselves together in the face of the wrists and ankles that were presented to you! Everyone should be especially proud of the skill you demonstrated. I LOVED every minute of this dance with you!

The word of the day was ACTON ... and Michael, congratulations for knowing it was a stuffed jacket under chainmail. The discussion we had about what dance demonstrates in a culture and why it is important was excellent. Understanding that dance is for entertainment, for brokering deals and to win favour in the court will help you see the broader picture of the importance of culture as we continue this unit.

Have a great weekend! No homework!!!

Welcome!

Wow! My first blog!

Here we go ... day three and we are away to the races. Today we introduced some vocab for the renaissance and reformation. I was very impressed with you texting skills and your abilities to research a vast array of paintings and writers and events.

Don't forget to bring your scarf/hat/elbow pads (?) to class tomorrow along with your dancing shoes!