Wednesday, February 12. 2014

Today's schedule is B-AG-A-D-C (please note blocks are shortened for an extended AG - Grades 8-11 for programming and grade 12 for graduation)

B Block Geography 12 - Today we'll do a brief introduction to topographic maps and I'll show you how to identify location, estimate area, calculate slope, and determine direction on them. We'll look at large versions of the 1:50000 scale topographic maps for the Comox Valley (92F10 and 92F11). For a large copy of the Forbidden Plateau 92F11 map click on the Online - En ligne (PDF or TIFF) at the GEOSCAN Fast-Link site. Using these maps we'll try to make sense of topographic maps in partners.

Here are a few webpages to help:
Natural Resources Canada Toporama
Reading Topographic Maps
Mount Union College Reading Topo Maps
United States Geological Survey Reading Topo Maps
Idaho State University Interpreting Topo Maps
National Wildfire Coordinating Group Reading Topographic maps pdf
Natural Resources & Water Queensland Australia Interpreting Topo Maps pdf
How Stuff Works Reading a Topographic Map
How to Read Topographical Maps

A Block Social Studies 11 - Today we'll continue looking at the "legislative process" - creating laws in Canada.

An idea to make a new law or to change an existing law starts out as a "bill." Each bill goes through several stages to become law.

1. At first reading, the bill is considered read for the first time and is printed. There is no debate.
2. At second reading, Members debate the principle of a bill — is the idea behind it sound? Does it meet people's needs?
3. If a bill passes at second reading, it goes to a committee of the House. Committee members study the bill carefully. They hold hearings to gather information. They can ask for government officials and experts to come and answer questions. The committee can propose amendments, or changes, to the bill. When a committee has finished its study, it reports the bill back to the House. The entire House can then debate it. During report stage debate, Members can suggest other amendments to the bill.
4. Once report stage is over, the bill is called for third reading debate. Members who voted for the bill at second reading may sometimes change their minds at third reading after seeing what amendments have or have not been made to the bill.
5. After a bill has passed third reading in the House of Commons, it goes through a similar process in the Senate.
6. Once both Chambers pass the bill in the same form, it is given Royal Assent and becomes law.

You will have to draft a simplified bill that you would like to see made law, where you'll write the idea in a simple sentence or two and then use the Make It Law handout to organize your ideas. After this, you'll create a comic strip demonstrating the process of how a Bill becomes a Law in Canada for next Tuesday.

D Block Social Studies 10 -  Today we'll continue with our work in the Geographic Understandings book (they're the green geography books in the class). Today I'd like to work on map symbols, relief and contours. You'll need to work through the following:

1. Page 20 questions 1, 2, and 3

After this, I'm going to ask you to draw two maps for me, so you'll need to work through questions 1 and 2 from page 21. Read the descriptions and then draw both maps...

The Natural Resources Canada website Toporama is a great resource to understand topographic map basics. Check out their Tips and Hints site here. There is a good tutorial on building topographic profiles on the Idaho State University Department of Geosciences website here. There's also a great tutorial here as well. Topographic Map symbols can be found here.