What 80% of Employers do

Please read the following article: What 80% of Employers do before inviting you to an interview

After reading, login to your blog and write a reflection outlining your thoughts and opinions regarding this article.  Please be sure to cite the article on your blog.

This will be marked as part of your reading/writing mark for term 2.

Olympics Newspaper unit!

Between February 7th and March 3, students will be working on a newspaper from the perspective of a chosen country.  The instructions are listed below:

Sochi Olympics Newspaper Unit

The Olympics are here! It is a time when countries come together to compete at various winter sports in peace (or healthy competition)!  What better way to keep up with the events than to do a newspaper project! This project will commence on February 7th and will finish on February 23rd.  You will have ample time to complete this in class but you are also welcome to work on it at home.

What to do:

You will be working on your newspaper individually and will choose one of the 80 countries who are participating in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. You will take on that country’s perspective of the Olympics and write from their point of view. There are enough countries participating that each student gets to pick a different  one! Not only will you learn more about these awesome games, but you will get to know a country as well! The more obscure the country, the better your newspaper will be (that and there will be bonus points for choosing a country that you know nothing about)!

My country is: ______________________ 

Parts of a newspaper to be included in this project from the perspective of your chosen country:

• A Feature article
• Editorial
• A Biography of an athlete from your country
• At least one news story related to your country and the Olympics
• Your choice of a Business/Science/Technology article with respect to the   Olympics (for ex.  new technology for a snowboard to slide 10 times faster etc.)
• A classified Ad or Advertisement
• A cartoon or a game
• Weather Forecast 

You also must include (somewhere in your project):

• A sponsor of that country's olympic team
• A sense of patriotism for your country (As editor of this newspaper, your work reflects positively for that country) 
• A piece/article on Socchi, Russia 
• Where the next Olympics will be held along with an interesting fact pertaining to it
• A highlight of an olympic sport of your choice
• A picture of the olympic uniform
• Facts on the history of the olympics
• Your country’s flag
• Olympic rings
• An interesting newspaper title
• A bibliography in alphabetical order (MLA style)

This project must be colourful and completed with a newspaper template (Pages or Word). All articles will be written and edited in your rough draft notebook and rough drafts will be collected with the final product.

You are encouraged to keep up-to-date with what is going on during these two weeks.  This project will be due once the Olympics have completed.  The Due date is: March 3rd 2014.

Please also keep in mind that any information that you take from the internet, should be from a reliable source (No Wikipedia). As you take notes, please write them in your own words in order to avoid being caught for Plagiarism.  Plagiarism is very serious in high school and beyond so it is important that you learn the skills of taking notes properly. 

Cyberbullying Legislation

This week is anti bullying week.  Please read the article and watch the video entitled "The complexities of cyberbullying" regarding the new proposed legislation. After you feel confident enough to share your opinions, please open up your writers notebook and write a response on how you feel about cyber bullying and the new law that the government is trying to pass. This response will eventually be typed onto your blogs as you are doing your part to stand up to bullying! Go grade 8s!

New Careers Test

The original date for the next careers vocab test was scheduled for Dec 3rd.  This would only give the students 2 weeks to study therefore I will be extending the test one week to Dec 11th.  New terms are below:
Networking                                       Salary
Obsolete                                           Seasonal Work
Occupation                                       Self-assessment
Outsourcing                                      Self-Employment
Part-time work                                 Self- motivated
People skills                                     Service
perseverance                                    Severance package
Pink Slip                                           Sex-role stereotyping
population                                         Sexual Harassment
Portfolio                                            Shift work
Post-secondary Education              Skill
Procrastination                                    Stereotyping
Product                                               Supervisor
Relocation                                           Telecommute
Resilience                                             Trade
Resume                                                Transferable skills
retire                                             Unemployment rate
Retraining                                        Wage

Photo Essay Rubric

At the moment, we have been lucky enough to borrow some macbooks from the board office and put a bit of a hold on our careers unit.  With the macbooks, we will be doing a photo essay and I will be teaching students how to use Photoshop Elements 8.  At the moment, students are working on planning out the topic and paragraphs of their essay.  The rubric is available on Google drive for your reference.  Their plans are to be completed by Monday, November 11th and working on their rough draft for the essay.  The majority of the work will be done in class therefore if your child has a lot of work at home, this means that they did not use their time efficiently in class.

Careers Glossary: Test on words November 13

https://docs.google.com/a/gapps.yrdsb.ca/file/d/0B4x6xPJLWNy0MUxRX0dkOEZaVlU/edit?usp=sharing

On the link, you will find the glossary terms for our careers unit.  You have 3 weeks to study the terms and there will be a test on November 13th.  I will post the words to know below. Only the words below will be on the test; however I can add them as we go along in this unit.

Apprentice                                       Employee
Business card                                   Employer
Balance                                            Employment
Canada Pension Plan                        Employment benefits
Career                                             Employment Insurance
Career Counsellor                            Entrepreneur
Career path                                      Expense
Career planning                                Freelancer
Character                                         Flexible hours
Climate                                            Full-time work
Communication Skills                       Global Economy
Consensus                                       Gross Income
Contract                                          Income tax
Coordinator                                     Interest
Credit                                              Investment
Cutback                                           Job ad
Deadline                                          Job role
Debit                                               Job sharing
Debt                                                Layoff
Deductions                                       Lifestyle
Degree                                             Manufacturing
Diploma                                           Materialism
Discrimination                                  Mentor
Downsizing                                      Mortgage
Dream role                                      Net Income

We will have another test on December 4th with the rest of the terms.  These terms will also help you with your Geography Unit on System Economics.

Science of happiness

Science of Happiness Video for those who want to re-watch it! Don't forget, you need to call or see the person to read your paragraph to by Friday! :)