Good afternoon SAVY parents!

What a wonderful first day in the Harry Potter-verse! It was wonderful to meet our young witches and wizards after much anticipation. We are looking forward to a great week.

After introductions and housekeeping, we were able to dive into the concept of the influence of Harry Potter in the world around us. Harry Potter has such a big effect on us, and we want to figure out why that is and how it became a cultural phenomenon. Some ideas we came up with include character relatability, curiosity (ask your student how Harry Potter is like a virus!), how we sell things, being out of the ordinary, timing, and convincing qualities.  The more we dive into Harry Potter this week, the more we can understand this big question.

In the afternoon, we discussed research and what it is.  For this class, we will be conducting qualitative research. Ask your child about the positivist and naturalist paradigms in research!  Our project for the week will be a qualitative research project.  The basis of all research is a good research question, and 1ualitative research questions are the ones that ask HOW and WHY.  We brainstormed some possible research topics about HOW people think about Harry Potter or WHY they think the way they think. After picking partners and deciding on a research question, we took a brain break with some Harry Potter trivia.

After break, we dove into some critical lens in race, class, and gender.  Below is a quick crash course so that you can discuss with your student:

– Gender critical lens is looking at literature through the lens of what it means to be male or female and how it supports or challenges those ideas.

– Social class critical lens is looking at what social classes are shown, what is said about social class, and how the text comments on or is represented in a text.

– Race critical lens is understanding how stereotypes are challenged, how do characters represent different races, and how the text comment on or represent characters of color.

This will be our starting point tomorrow when we use these lenses of critical theory to analyze some Harry Potter passages.

We are looking forward to another magical day tomorrow!

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