Summer SAVY 2018: Session 3, Day 5 – Engineering Solutions (Rising 1st)
It is hard to believe that our amazing week has come to an end. Open House is always a favorite with our students because it is their time to showcase their learning and application of learning from the week. It is also a day I look forward to because I have the opportunity to meet the parents of the incredible students whom I have had the honor to get to know and work with this week.
Since we learned about beneficial and non-beneficial insects, we re-visited two concepts we talked about earlier in the week, native and non-native species. After reminding ourselves what these two concepts mean and how they are opposite in their meaning, we learned about invasive species and the consequences and implications of what can happen when non-native species are introduced into habitats and ecosystems they are not naturally found in. Students really caught on to the understanding that these invasive species are not bad or harmful if they are in their natural habitat or ecosystem, but when they are introduced to a new region where they don’t have their natural predators, their population can cause an imbalance. We saw examples of kudzu plants, European Rabbits brought to the US, pythons being brought to the US, especially in Florida, to keep as pets, and then they are released, and we looked at how floods and other natural disasters can uproot animals and cause them to be relocated in different ecosystems. Students drew pictures of invasive species in their engineering notebook.
Our week of engineering learning would not be complete without connecting our natural pollination system to other real world systems that we can identify. So we walked outside to look for other evidence of systems. Some of the systems students thought of were weather, clouds, Vanderbilt as a school system and the water cycle system.
Thank you for the opportunity to work with each and every student this week. I was enriched with all of my interactions with these uniquely special students! I hope to see your students again at SAVY.
Sincerely,
Ms. Tyson
Open House Moments
