Author
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 21, 2018—I was so impressed with the students’ work on the Pirate Problem this morning! This is a problem that my (much!) older students often struggle with, and this class tackled the issues head on and found a solution. It was amazing to see their enthusiasm as they neared the answer and weren’t ready to be...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Story Gardening (Rising 3rd and 4th)
Jun. 21, 2018—Students discussed graphic novel/comic conventions and continued to work on their stories. Some chose to transpose their stories into a graphic novel format and others used a chapter book format. They also reviewed examples of flap copy from published books and broke them down to look at the way they were composed. Finally, students revised...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Animal Communications (Rising 3rd and 4th)
Jun. 21, 2018—We spent the morning learning all about how anthropogenic (man-made) noise affects animals and their ability to communicate. Students split up into small groups and were assigned readings on distinct impacts of anthropogenic noise on animals and ecosystems. For example, one group read about how traffic noise causes stress in tree frogs, as it impedes...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Investigations in Forensic Science (Rising 2nd)
Jun. 21, 2018—How is it already THURSDAY?! Our week has flown by and has been packed with lots of learning and experimenting. We look forward to Open House where we can show off the crime scene, the suspect list, our test samples/findings, and our working wall. Open House is tomorrow, Friday the 22nd, from 9:00-9:30 on the...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Animal Adaptations (Rising 1st)
Jun. 21, 2018—Happy Fourth Day! What a busy day for our zoologists! They began the day by using the Reasoning about a Situation or Event map to think through all the sides of the wild pigs’ problem. This was a difficult task because they were introduced to the advanced vocabulary of stakeholders, assumptions, point of view,...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Archetypes and Literature (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 20, 2018—Hello and Happy Wednesday, During the past two days we worked on developing our understanding of archetypes and our ability to identify them in a variety of contexts. Today, we tightened our focus to look very specifically at a single character archetype: the leader. Our goal was to explore the complexities and possibilities of this...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 20, 2018—Most of the morning in Puzzles and Problem Solving was spent converting our classroom into an airplane…or at least a room with 13 seats and boarding passes. Consider the following scenario: The first person to board a fully-booked flight drops his or her boarding pass and doesn’t bother to pick it up. The person doesn’t...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Story Gardening (Rising 3rd and 4th)
Jun. 20, 2018—Students started off the day by writing character descriptions for the characters they drew previously, including facts like character names, goals or fears, habitats, and other details. Next, they discussed dialogue and practiced creating humorous dialogue to go with a graphic novel illustration. After studying parts of traditional narrative structure, students worked on their own...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Animal Communications (Rising 3rd and 4th)
Jun. 20, 2018—Your rising third and fourth graders started the day once again spending time outside as naturalists. We added more signaling animals to our campus maps and saw a variety of animals communicating, such as blue jays, crickets, European starlings, and house finches. The students did an excellent job pulling from what they learned the previous...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Investigations in Forensic Science (Rising 2nd)
Jun. 20, 2018—I cannot believe we’re already half way through our week at SAVY! This investigation has been so fun. I’m greeted daily with big smiles and lots of new predictions from the investigators. They can’t contain their excitement. Our suspect list is narrowing down and the students are drawing some strong conclusions! Today we focused on...