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Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Leads and Angles: Judging Journalism Through Analysis and Perspective (5th/6th)
Oct. 24, 2017—We started off the class with a little activity: students where asked to close their eyes and make a list of every sound they heard in the room. We cataloged everything from finger snapping to computer humming. Once we had compiled a list, we discussed how to rank facts based on the target audience. For...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Journey into the Universe: Astronomy 101 (3rd/4th)
Oct. 24, 2017—Today in Planetary Astronomy we learned lots about extrasolar planets (a.k.a. exoplanets)! First of all, we had to investigate methods of detecting them. This website has some particularly good animations: 5 Ways to Find a Planet In our further study of such detection methods, one of the favorite events was we spun around with each...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Disease Detectives: How Scientists Prevent Big Problems (3rd/4th)
Oct. 24, 2017—We’re almost to the end Disease Detectives! I just want to take the time to say what an absolute pleasure it’s been to go through the SAVY experience with you all! I can proudly say that my first SAVY experience has been an amazing one and I hope you all have had a great time...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Intro to Programming: Coding 101 (1st/2nd)
Oct. 24, 2017—Dear SAVY Parents, Our adventures in code class the past weeks have included a fun way to experience and debug algorithms. Whenever we transitioned between activities, I would “program” the students by giving them a list of tasks such as: log out of your website, push in your chair, walk to the back of the...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Adventures in Algebra (1st/2nd)
Oct. 24, 2017—Happy Fifth Day! Today the students continued to brainstorm things that were special to them and convert these things from simple to complex equations. They were introduced to advanced math concepts such as square roots and exponents. They were fascinated to learn that any number to the exponent of zero is 1, and any number...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 5- Environmental Explorations: Dig It! (Kindergarten)
Oct. 24, 2017—Dear Parents: This morning we began our morning with our 14 Experiments That Failed book, and then we reviewed our soil experiment from last week. We discussed what we learned and how that learning could be applied to the soil erosion problems on Queen Anne’s Island. Next, we looked at the topic of garbage. We...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 4- Genetic Engineering: The Science of Modified Organisms (5th/6th)
Oct. 16, 2017—Good Afternoon Parents and Students! Today we covered gene editing and how it relates to sequencing technology. While it sounds pretty complicated it’s really just how computers read DNA codes. These codes can then be identified through huge databases (NCBI) and thus the protein it will make can be predicted. We started today by playing...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 4- Leads and Angles: Judging Journalism Through Analysis and Perspective (5th/6th)
Oct. 16, 2017—Students, thank you again for a wonderful morning in Leads and Angles! We covered a lot this week. Our work began in a more philosophic vein, as I asked you to contemplate the differentiation between fact and truth; it seems we were able to list many facts about the past week, yet truth was far...
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 4- Journey into the Universe: Astronomy 101 (3rd/4th)
Oct. 16, 2017—Today was an active day in Planetary Astronomy! First, we reviewed a little about orbits from last week (circular, elliptical, hyperbola (a.k.a. ByeBye orbit!)) and then started talking about WHY orbits look that way and the cause of gravity. We did look at the equation for gravity (an algebra equation) and the students liked that....
Fall SAVY 2017, Day 4- Disease Detectives: How Scientists Prevent Big Problems (3rd/4th)
Oct. 16, 2017—Hello SAVY students and parents! I can’t believe we’re already on week 4!! This week, we talked about Ebola. As scary as the disease can be, the students were troopers and were great at focusing on being the disease detectives that they’ve been training to be! We discussed the 2014 outbreak that started out in...