Thursday, December 10, 2009

Today's schedule is B-A-Lunch-D-C

B - Geography 12 - Today we will watch the Hurricane Katrina DVD that we didn't get to yesterday. We'll start the class by working on the plotting activity for Hurricane Diana; you'll need to track the path of Diana as she hovered off the coast of North Carolina in 1984. We are doing this activity in order to understand the difficulty in predicting the path of hurricanes along with the challenges associated with identifying areas where hurricanes make landfall. Why? The staff at the National Hurricane Center have to make their best guess as to where a hurricane will make landfall. The predictions were eerily accurate for Katrina. I hope we'll have some time to talk afterward but if not we'll pick it up tomorrow.

A - Social Studies 11 - Today we'll start by going over your impressions from the Atomic Cafe video and then we'll go over the answers to yesterday's definitions: NORAD, CIDA, la Francophonie, SALT, SDI, FIRA, FTA, NAFTA, Glasnost, and Perestroika. For the last portion of the class you'll need to work on questions 2, 3, and 4 from page 150 from the Counterpoints textbook.

D - Law 12 - Today we continue our look at civil cases by reviewing the Thomas v. Hamilton Board of Education (1994) case and the questions I asked you to complete yesterday (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, & 7 on page 273). We will spend the rest of the class looking over the eight sob stories who walk through the doors of your imaginary law firm for your major project. Tomorrow we'll talk about judgments and compensation (general damages, specific damages, special damages, punitive damages, nominal damages, and injunctions), which should help you with your case project.

C - Introduction to Law 9/10 - Today we will look at the collection and processing of DNA evidence. We will work through the simulation on the Rice University CSI site and then you'll have the rest of the class to work on your Clue Us In crime scene reconstruction activity. Remember the Clue Us In project is due ONE WEEK from today (Thursday, December 17th, 2009)!