Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 1, “Creature Connections: Animals, Humans, and the Natural World” (1st-2nd)
Hello SAVY Families,
The animal expert in your family had a thrilling first day of SAVY Session 4: Creature Connections. I am eager to tell you about the marvelous learning that took place today!
To start the day, we laid the foundation for our course. Through a reading of The Great Kapok Tree, students were introduced to the concept of interactions. An interaction is defined as “communication or direct involvement with someone or something.” Students noted interactions between the living plants and animals and nonliving factors in the story. We then had our first of many mini debates: Should humans cut down trees for the purpose of shelter and safety? It was fascinating to see the SAVY students present their thoughts, and many of them changed their ideas once more evidence from The Great Kapok Tree was presented. To end this lesson, our class came up with four generalizations of interactions: interactions are inevitable, interactions allow for changes, interactions are caused by multiple influences, and interactions can be positive, negative, or mutually beneficial.
After that, we focused our learning on interactions between living and nonliving things in an environment. First, students had to draw their own model of a food chain, noting how their chosen animals interact with one another through energy transfer. Then, we thought about these food chains in the context of their environments. All environments have both biotic (living) factors and abiotic (nonliving) factors. Using a series of six cubes, different biotic and abiotic factors were thrown into each of the students’ environments. The SAVY students were challenged to think about the effect of that new biotic or abiotic factor on their environment and draw a model for how that may affect all other living and nonliving things. The discussions from this activity led many of the SAVY students to make deep connections to the constantly changing world around them. We watched a short video to introduce the concept of climate change and discussed how major changes, like climate or natural disasters, may affect a series of living and nonliving things. Finally, students were faced with a problem: Your school is building a new gymnasium, but that will require a pond to be filled in. How will this change, which will benefit your school, harm the environment?
Finally, we learned about a real story of a major environmental change through studying the story of Ivan the gorilla from the book and movie The One and Only Ivan. Some students have already read the book or watched the movie, but for those who have not, we viewed the trailer and heard a brief synopsis of the story. Students learned how Ivan interacted in his new home at the mall through artwork. We studied examples of Ivan’s artwork and noted the interactions between the shapes in the artwork. Students then got to create some of their own artwork in Ivan’s style. Those who have not heard the story certainly want to read the book and watch the movie now!
At the end of the day, we met for a closing circle and tied all our learning together through a series of inquiry-based questions and by connecting our activities to the generalizations of interactions. I am so impressed with the students’ hard work today, and I am looking forward to learning together the rest of this week!
Sincerely,
Ms. Anna Gruchot