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Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- Truth vs. Perception (5th/6th)
Jan. 29, 2018—Hello from SAVY’s Spring 2018 course on Truth vs. Perception! We started out class with basic introductions, a little icebreaker, concept mapping, and setting guidelines for the group. (It spoke to the advanced nature of the class to see the students recommend “no hypocrisy” for our list of rules.) We began our discussion of material...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- A Great Debate (3rd/4th)
Jan. 29, 2018—What a fantastic first day of class! We started our day by playing a “name game” to get to know each other and help everyone get comfortable sharing with their peers. We had an introduction to Socrates and Plato and how they are related to our course, learned about false premises and deductive reasoning, had...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- Unpacking Adaptation (3rd/4th)
Jan. 29, 2018—Students of Unpacking Adaptation: From the Page to the Stage, Thank you for an outstanding first session! I so enjoyed meeting — and, in the case of former students, re-meeting — each and every one of you. I suspect we have a fun and invigorating class ahead of us. We played a lot of games...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- Modified Organisms (3rd/4th)
Jan. 29, 2018—Hello parents and students! We had a great first day. We learned all about basic microbiology and what it means to be a scientist, investigating characteristics and skills that make great researchers and investigators. We also had a great conversation about good bacteria and bad bacteria as well as some really interesting ones, including thermophilic bacteria that...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- Earth Explorers (1st/2nd)
Jan. 29, 2018—We started off our Earth Explorers course with a bang! Beginning the fundamental force of gravity we worked our way through basic concepts that are central to Earth’s structure including, matter, mass, and density. A number of exciting experiments involving liquids of different density illustrated how different layers can float on top of one another!...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- It’s Elemental (1st/2nd)
Jan. 29, 2018—We had such an exciting first day in It’s Elemental. To get started we learned about some amazing science such as Marie Curie, a brilliant chemist, Albert Einstein, a great physicist, and Thomas Edison, an amazing inventor. We identified characteristics of scientist that help them be successful, such as being curious, hardworking, and observant. We...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- Ecological Expedition (1st/2nd)
Jan. 29, 2018—Happy First Day! My Interactions in Ecology and Literature class is digging deep into a reading and science unit on the interactions among animals, people, books, art, words, and the environment. They took a pre-assessment by completing a concept map on their prior knowledge of “interactions”. They learned that interactions are actions between different living...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- What’s the Matter? (Kindergarten)
Jan. 29, 2018—We had a wonderful first day of SAVY discussing what it means to be a scientist and how we can use our skills of observations to study the world around us. As a class, we brainstormed all the different ways we could categorize the seemingly random objects in a box. We developed several ways that...
Spring SAVY 2018, Day 1- Probability and Prediction (Kindergarten)
Jan. 29, 2018—Our first class was full of probability experiments and lively conversations! We started by talking about the definition of probability, and for our purposes right now, we are using this definition of probability: the chance that something will happen. First, the students did a simple coin flip experiment where they recorded if the coin landed...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Genetic Engineering: The Science of Modified Organisms (5th/6th)
Oct. 24, 2017— Our 5th Saturday has come and gone! We started our day with the transformed E.coli from the bioengineering virtual lab where the students engineered competent cells to carry a red pigment color from jellyfish. We took these cells and plated them on nutrient agar (bacteria growth food). This “petri-dish art” will be a...