Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 1, “Truth v Perception” (5th-6th)
Hello SAVY families!
Well, this course is sure to be full of fascinating personalities and ideas! It is already clear that many of our students have complex and interesting perspectives, and I can’t wait to see what we discover about each other as we investigate our similarities and differences and learn to express ourselves and expand our worldviews.
We started class with a discussion and overview of the schedule. In this course, we will embrace a myriad of learning methods and participate in a variety of activities, from reading and writing to critical analysis to physical and very interactive team activities. Today’s theme was ‘Investigating Reality’. We started out by getting to know each other’s names and favorite mediums as we thought about how we communicate our impressions and ideas about the world and what we use to communicate them. We discussed what a medium is and, as a method of communication and expression, what different media provide. In the morning session, we learned about the rhetorical triangle of persuasion and practiced using pathos, logos, and ethos to express our viewpoints and to investigate the nature of truth – is it absolute or is it determined by experience?
After we got to know each other a bit, we thought through some of the complications of truth, reality, and perception through a few classic thought experiments. We wondered and laughed about the idea of brains being in a vat, asked how we interpret the world around us scientifically, theoretically, and with others. We talked about how our perceptions are influenced by many things!
Each afternoon, we will take on a different project that will help us put what we’ve learned into action. After lunch, we created and performed parodies in the form of play scripts of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Ask your student about how they connected their mini-play to our reading using heart, head, and cred.
Each morning, we will also have a team trivia review of concepts and vocabulary. Within the evening blog each day, I will include a hint for a bonus question answer. Please share the hint with your student and allow them to look through the blog to find the answer and review vocabulary!
Bonus question hint for students: In class today, we came up with a shorthand/slang phrase to help us remember what pathos, logos, and ethos are. Can you find it somewhere in the blog and remember it tomorrow?
Until tomorrow,
Ms. Rho