Summer SAVY 2017, Session 3/Day 4- Budding Botanist (Rising 1st)

Posted by morganr1 on Thursday, June 29, 2017 in SAVY.

Our Budding Botanists are amazed that our week exploring together is coming to a close. I hope you can join us for our Open House tomorrow, 9:15am-9:45am, Wyatt 3rd floor. We would love to share some of our discoveries with you,
Today we synthesized a lot of content. We created models of a flower and it’s parts. Your scientists become the teachers, as they used these to explain the structure and function of a flower and pollination. We learned about photosynthesis and they could even follow the basics of the molecular way of writing about photosynthesis / respiration – 6CO2 + 6H2O + sun [light energy] = C6H12O6 + 6O2 [glucose] + 6O2 [oxygen] = energy [36 ATP – adenosine triphosphate/energy carrier].

We each looked at various plant slides under microscopes – the joy of learning at this age is contagious! We then set out to solve the mystery of the missing bees. This video and this TED talk helped us consider culprits [Disease? Genetics? Chemicals? Starvation?] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qkIhnGfuJ4; http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-case-of-the-vanishing-honeybees-emma-bryce Finding out that 1/3 of our nation’s food production is pollinated by bees, we were eager to hypothesize. Our class discourse was fun as students stretched their thinking and were able to respectfully communicate their opinion, defend their reasoning, and listen to others. Impressive minds!

Many thanks for choosing SAVY to be a part of your summer. I was delighted to get to share my week with your scientists!

Mrs. Pfister