Summer SAVY Session 6, Day 3, Encounters and Experiences
Dear SAVY Families,
Today was another incredible day of learning, connections, and expression of ideas in SAVY Session 6: Encounters and Experiences, Archetypes in Literature. We started the day by reviewing the concepts that we have learned so far including encounter, experience, archetype, character archetype, and situational archetype. This review set us up for success in deepening our learning of each of these terms throughout the rest of the class.
We started the day by reading and analyzing an excerpt from The Emperor’s New Clothes and by watching and analyzing the short film La Luna. We discussed how each of these may help us to decide if we shape our experiences or if our experiences shape us. We then returned to this question, and many other hard-to-answer questions, and revisited our thought process for how we would choose to answer the questions. Once again, students loved being able to choose their side and present their thinking for how they chose to answer the questions presented to them.
Next, we moved on to a project we will continue throughout the week: a mini novel study of the famous story Wonder. Many students have already read this book or watched the movie, however, they quickly realized that their recent understanding of archetypes will help them to analyze the story in a new way. We watched the movie trailer to set the context for our story and then started reading the first couple of chapters. We then used a graphic organizer to make sure we remember all that we have experienced throughout reading this story.
After ORA, we spent the rest of the day diving into the concept of symbolic archetypes. We started by playing a game of pictionary and debriefing how this game is representative of symbolic archetypes. Next, we watched the video of Let it Go from Disney’s Frozen. This song is full of symbolic archetypes, and the students had fun watching this popular video with a new, analytical lens. Continuing with the theme of symbolic archetypes, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and discussed the many symbols that make up the classic children’s book. To end the day, we watched a read aloud of the short story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi from The Jungle Book. To analyze our understanding of this story, students worked together to create a visual metaphor poster with three key plot points from the story. It was inspiring to see the many creative ways that students conveyed their understanding of the story.
Discussion Question: Do we shape our experiences, or do our experiences shape us? If an encounter is unexpected, can we still shape it? What is a symbolic archetype? Where did you see symbolic archetypes in the material you studied today? Which activity was your favorite today?
I hope your students get some rest tonight and are excited for a fantastic final two days of SAVY Session 6! There is still much to look forward to in our class.
Sincerely,
Miss Gruchot 🙂