Freezing Rain Day....New Plan?

Hello students,

Looking out the portable window and the snow is starting to fall.....snowday(?).  Looks like we will need to bump our winter overnight experience to Monday/Tuesday.  I know a few students are juggling work.  Hopefully this is enough time to juggle scheduling. 

As of this moring (Wednesday) our schedule will be as follows...

Thusday - Prep Day as planned - tents, stoves, snowshoes
Friday - Snowshoe Mapping activity at Little Lake, gym for Fun Friday
Monday/Tuesday - Out overnight in Copeland Forest.
Wednesday - Atmosphere Unit Test, Climate Disaster Presentation
Thursday - Alpine ski/snowboard day
Friday - Block 1 wrap up.
March Break to follow.
Yikes!  Then is only a few weeks to Costa Rica. 
Time is going quickly!

Hope this keeps everybody up to speed. 

Simms 

Hey GEO,
Just getting started today and see Freezing Rain Scheduled.  Looks like buses cancelled. 
Hmmmm..... new plan for GEO I guess.  See picture below for details. We still need a prep day so we will bump everything until Monday/Tuesday for our trip. Sound like a plan?

Simms

I Wanna Go Rock Climbing!

In class day for Geo

Monday, February 27 Geo Studies had an in class day, all day, which was quite unusual!

First off Simms was sick, get better soon! The whole class missed him today because even if we are doing some boring seat work he makes it fun and interesting by changing things up and doing group activities to interact with each other. But we had a supply, Mrs. Simmons, who was nice. We did some atmosphere work..while listening to Christy's awesome Geo playlist! Then we finished the movie, The Inconvenient truth. That movie is very eye opening, I've seen it a couple times now and each time something new shocks me, it's scary to think about some of the things that are happening to our environment.(Statistics about the ice melting and how many cities are going to be flooded.) Later with Ms. A we had some fun doing a group activity, which turned into some friendly competition for some suckers! We had to write the most answers down on a piece of paper from the top of our heads to the questions she asked. All the questions were about Universities and Colleges..my group ALMOST won! 

Anyways..get better Simms!

Courtney Ellis

Rock Climbing // Outdoor Adventure Show

Friday, February 24 Geo Studies made they're mark in Toronto with Rock Climbing in the morning and a walk around at The Outdoor Adventure Show.

Rock Climbing on Friday was held at True North Climbing Gym where Geo Studies got to experience the thrill and atheism it takes to Rock Climb. Personally I have climbed before and enjoy it, but after a long day of boxing the day before and a hockey playoff game that night I was extremely tired and arms and upper body were at there limits. After learning the safety precautions and learning how to attach your harness properly and how to keep your partner safe while climbing the whole class was ready to climb. After I went up and down the wall a couple of times my body gave up and was out of juice, I wish I had more energy to participate in some of the other activities like Bouldering. Climbing sadly came to a close and we were off to our next stop which was the Outdoor Adventure Show.

True North

The Outdoor Adventure Show was a total blast! they're were so many booths and it was great to interact with all sorts of types of tour guides, one of the booths that I found most interesting was the Ontario Parks booth, it gave lots of different options on which parks to attend and which ones may appeal to you. I got lots of information and ideas on what I want to do for my trip proposal and am really looking forward to presenting it to the class.

The Outdoor Adventure Show

Can't wait to share my next adventure .

- Charles Knowler  

Self Defense for Costa Rica

Unit #2- Atmosphere day 2

Today was spent in our lovely portable 2 home. Although it was a day filled with lots of seat work (which compared to our daily routine is quite foreign) Mr Simms still found a way to attract our attention to day two of our Atmosphere unit. We took a trip back to the past when we reviewed how to monitor climate change. We took in depths looks at the 3 different climate classifications. It was all pretty plain and simple seeing as we had spent weeks learning how to do it in Grade 10 geography. Maybe not the most exciting day for our Geo family but for a graphing lover this was a day spent in heaven. And for those of us who just wanted to get through our work for the sake of getting it done would of found ourselfs pleasently pleased seeing as the diffuclty level wasnt too high. Anyways, half way through the day it was a refreshing break to be split into groups of 2 or 3 and discover for ourselfs how climate can really change over the years. WE WERE ABLE TO DO ALL THIS WITH JUST A DECK OF CARDS, GRAPH PAPER, AND A HIGHLIGHTER! As always Mr Simms let us really figure it out on out own. Talk about cool!

By completing this small 20 minute activity we were able to see that over the 3 years we tracked the weather the weather changes incrimates were actually quite small. This really posed the question in are head to whether the the sustaining the earth is possible now or its impossible because we have reached our tipping point. It even made some of us rethink our previous anwser to this same question on our unit test the day before. Well thats it for now, you'll be hearing from us soon as we continue on your path of learning!

P.S. Heres alittle sneak peak at tommorow... were going boxing. Check back soon to here all about it!

- Laura Kuikman

Test Day !

It's Monday, February 21st, just got back from the long weekend and we had a test today! I rocked it. There was a good variety of questions about our first unit, which was the environment. After the test, we watched a video on David Suzuki titled " The Suzuki Diaries" it showed us different ways that countries are converting to "green energy", windmills were a very popular form of energy production. When we came back from lunch we did some textbook work and then it was off to Flags Unlimited, where we were shown various things about the company. So far i am really enjoying the course, from all the things we learn indoors to all the fun activities we do outdoors. The trip that i have learnt the most from, would have to be curling. When we went last Friday i learnt a lot about patience because it takes quite a few tries before you get the rock to land perfectly in the opposing house. The class is amazing, all the students are really enthusiastic and easy-going! I'm really looking forward to the rest of the semester. :)


- William Lerch