Summer SAVY 2018: Session 1, Day 5 – Mighty Metamorphosis (Rising 3rd and 4th)
Hello!
For our final session – that makes me genuinely sad to write! – we turned to perhaps our most important topic: the transformative power of positive actions. We watched several videos to introduce the idea. The first communicated this idea through the metaphor of colors spreading in a colorless world. The students analyzed this idea and explored other metaphors for how happiness spreads: a soccer ball kicked from one person to another, for example. The second film we considered for its use of persuasive techniques. How did it attempt to convince others of the power of positive action?
(Find links for the videos here and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9UByLyOjBM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwelE8yyY0U )
For discussion, what comparison would you use to describe the spread of happiness? Why?)
After brainstorming ideas for transforming the world – no small task! – we set about working on our own brief problem/solution pieces for achieving that transformation.
Then, it was time to try to pull together twenty-four or so hours (!) of class work to see what we’d finally reached. For this part, we indulged in some messiness and also some metacognitive strategies: Let’s just get the ideas out there on the board and see if we can find the threads and connections later. Once we’d transformed the board into a truly impressive and formidably intellectual piece of graffiti we made things tactile: with the ideas from the board transferred onto sheets of paper we tried to develop categories and connections between concepts. On the floor. One idea per student. Our goal: tighten our grasp of the material so we could successfully teach the parents in stations during open house.
The students went to this task with gusto, finding examples from our texts, typing up definitions and notes, and designing their stations. For me, the most gratifying part of the week might just have been watching the students deliver their presentations with such confidence and enthusiasm. True professionals!
Thank you for allowing us to have this time with your children. I hope it was as transformative for you and for them as it was for me.
Sincerely,
Kevin Finn
Our Writers Working on Concept Maps
