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Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Truth vs. Perception (5th/6th)
Feb. 26, 2018—In Week 5, we moved on from our discussion of texts and stories to look at truths and perceptions as they relate to visual aspects. We began by discussing the visual arts in relationship to everyday objects and postmodern art. We started by asking: what counts as art? Who gets to make that decision? The...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- A Great Debate (3rd/4th)
Feb. 26, 2018—We are winding up SAVY with some amazing debates. This weekend we argued which are better; squid or octopi as well as sharks vs. whales and then moved on to the deeply passionate topic of Kroger vs. Target. We all have strong feelings about Target. Part of class was spent discussing what we will be...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Unpacking Adaptation (3rd/4th)
Feb. 26, 2018—What a great Saturday we had! After a few warm-up games and a quick breeze through Aristotle’s Poetics, we turned our focus to new directions. Together we read Hiawyn Oram’s The Giant Surprise: A Narnia Story, a short work inspired by the world invented by C.S. Lewis. Though the story has no direct link to...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Modified Organisms (3rd/4th)
Feb. 26, 2018—Good Afternoon Parents and Students! We started today by playing our favorite game where students write down something special to them (favorite food, place to visit) and I try to guess who it was. I will say I am getting better, but the students are definitely winning so far. Today we covered gene editing and...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Earth Explorers (1st/2nd)
Feb. 26, 2018—Day 5: Streams and Groundwater After refining our vocabulary and geomorphological processes, we headed into the Vanderbilt Earth and Environmental laboratory to build a stream. Students had the opportunity to model all the physical processes (e.g. meandering, erosion, deposition, and channelization) that make up river networks! Students also learned a bit about my favorite water...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Ecological Expedition (1st/2nd)
Feb. 26, 2018—Happy Fifth Day! The students began the day by reviewing abiotic and biotic factors. As ecologists, they participated in a quick debate “Should humans interfere in ecosystems?” by reading an article and watching a video about the spread of wild boars and the decrease of the tuber population. As mathematicians, they constructed graphs to show...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- It’s Elemental (1st/2nd)
Feb. 26, 2018—Well it is almost the end of It’s Elemental and we are ending with lots of energy and excitement. This week we learned about different groups on our periodic table such as alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, or noble gases. We then adopted an element. We read a short page that focused on elemental properties,...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- What’s the Matter (Kindergarten)
Feb. 26, 2018—During our fifth week of SAVY, we learned more about a few physical properties of matter: mass and volume. We learned that mass is the amount of matter in something. It’s closely related to weight, but weight is gravities effect on a matter’s mass. So on the earth and the moon a person would have...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 5- Probability and Prediction (Kindergarten)
Feb. 26, 2018—This week we continued our work with theoretical and experimental probability. First we started with a question about favorite ice cream flavors. We polled the class and used the results to think about a hypothetical ice cream shop. We talked about how knowing customers’ favorite flavors might help us with ordering ice cream for the...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 4- Biophotonics (5th/6th)
Feb. 19, 2018—This week, we got to put our optical toolboxes to use. After reviewing what we covered for the first half of the course, students set out to design their own pulse oximeter. Of the methods we covered, students accurately identified Raman scattering and absorption as two possible methods for measuring blood oxygenation. Students analyzed recorded...