Summer SAVY, Session 1 Day 5, Witty Word Play (1st-2nd)
Our last day together started with two fun Word Ladders. Students have become very quick at transforming one word into another by changing one letter at a time, with each step being a valid word. Next, we continued having more fun with silly alliterations in tongue twisters. Students had fun coming up with sentences and phrases using the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
We took advantage of a moment when the weather was delightful to step outside to independently and partner-read some of our favorite books. Nothing is better than reading a good book with the gentle breeze blowing.
Once we were back inside, students started the exploration of secret codes by learning about the history of cryptography, which is another great invention that we can thank the Greeks for creating. Students learned about both transposition (the scrambling of words) and substitution (replacement of letters), like the Caesar shift cipher.
We also looked at two more simple ciphers: Zigzag and Ruler. Then, students practiced creating secret codes using the Reverse Alphabet Code. They each created one to three secret messages and then had a partner decipher their messages. The fourth code we learned was the Pigpen Code. We wrapped up discussing the code to communicate with Rebus activities. I challenged students to go home and write their own Rebus.
We completed our day with learning about unique languages, such as how Peruvians use fruits and vegetables to say something like Papaya if it is easy. Or, a village in Turkey uses whistling to communicate, and Australia likes to use shortened versions of words.
I am sending home a workbook from class, but please note that it will come home with pages not completed. You can continue to build on lessons learned in class using the remainder of the workbook and the other activity pages sent home. We learned so much this week! Thank you for sharing your young scholars with us! We hope to see them in future SAVY classes!