SOCIAL STUDIES EX

This year, as a Year 10, I only take Social Studies in Semester 2, the second half of the year. Currently I begin the course next week, having now dropped Visual Art for the more mundane, yet compulsory studies of our world. I do not know what we will learn about yet but I am looking forward to seeing who is in my class. Already I know a few which will make learning more fun and interesting.
I was chosen to be in an extension class for Social Studies, and the other students in my class and I will do Social Studies for Year 11 students. I think I'll cope just fine; this also means I will sit an NCEA exam at the end of the year for this subject and have the opportunity to obtain some credits here, a year early, which will help in my required quota of 80 next year.


I've had two weeks in my Social Studies class and was glad I knew everybody except for four people. We have a nice teacher who is so much like my teacher in Year 8. Our first study is about Terrorism. We've looked at what terrorism is, writing definitions so that we can conclude what acts were and what ones weren't terrorism.

- terrorism
noun
the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

Of course we have looked at the 9/11 bombings and what makes a fundamentalist. From here we moved on to a study of the Islam religion, including their 5 Pillars and beliefs of Muhammed and the prophets. It has helped me understand a lot! I'm finding it very interesting.


The Islam religion cropped up again when we looked at The Crusades, the series of wars for mutual Holy Land around 1096 AD. Crusaders were Christians fighting Muslims for possession of lands such as Nazareth, Jerusalem and Bethlehem - places in which Jesus lived.


Today we watched a video of interviewed Muslims and the differences between everyday life for them, following Islam, and the extremists who used violence and terrorism to evangelize.


The information kept rolling in, in lectures from our teacher, to videos recorded previously and on the 11th of September this year, to sheets and sheets of exemplars, questions, revision notes and knowledge we had to acquire. The climax was the practice exam that we had, and although we were given only two hours and are getting three in November, I just got all I wanted written down (an essay about how an event - 9/11 - changed society) finishing within the last thirty seconds. I could have written about four times as much as I did, but I think I wrote everything required or what I thought I needed, so I'm happy with my Merit + that I was awarded! Bring on the real exam!