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Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 2 – Field Ecology (Rising 5th/6th)
Jul. 24, 2018—Dear Parents, Everyday this week is covering a different range of biological diversity! Today your children learned about the bugs and birds in the world around us. Both insects and birds play huge roles in ecology. Your children read scientific literature and became scientific advisors for a leading mosquito control company. They learned about the...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 2 – Theory, Criticism, and The Force (Rising 5th/6th)
Jul. 24, 2018—We began with a quick review of some major concepts: criticism, formalism, and structuralism. In order to recognize some distinctions between formalism and structuralism, we turned to Plato and his Forms. We used the metaphor of a cookie with M&M’s scattered throughout: some M&M’s are on the top, some in the middle, and some are...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 2 – Archaeology and Ancient Culture (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 24, 2018—Our archaeologists had a very challenging day today! First, we reviewed everything we learned yesterday about the kind of work that archaeologists do and how social systems work. After reviewing the concept of systems and spending a little more time discussing Maya social systems, we moved on to economic systems. Understanding and conceptualizing economic systems...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 2 – Programming and Robotics (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 24, 2018—Dear Parents, We had an busy and productive Tuesday! The students were excited to be back in the classroom after getting to explore programming and Sphero robots yesterday afternoon. To prepare for our afternoon of programming the robots, we reviewed concepts that we learned yesterday in class, including algorithms, debugging, loops and conditions. To make...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 2 – Neuroscience Navigators (Rising 2nd)
Jul. 24, 2018—In our second day at Neuroscience Navigators we really put our new knowledge into action! To start, we reviewed some material from the previous day. We built an impressive concept map as a class of all the new words we’ve been learning, and importantly, how they connect conceptually. Next, we got back to our build-a-brain...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 2 – Playing With Words (Rising 1st)
Jul. 24, 2018—How many words can you make with ant in them? How about 26? We began reading a book called Antics, and as you can guess, each word with ant in it had an illustration featuring an ant or a group of ants. First I asked students if they could think of any new words to...
Summer Career Connections at SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 1 – Kinematics for Mechanical Design (Rising 7th)
Jul. 23, 2018—The first day of Kinematics for Mechanical Design is finished! We had a fabulous time getting to know one another, drawing, and learning about the kinematics (motion analysis) of pulley systems. Students have been given a three ring binder and drawing tools to sketch as well as formally draft their ideas. Each notebook has a...
Summer Career Connections at SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 1 – Science of Emotion (Rising 7th)
Jul. 23, 2018—Dear SAVY Parents, Our “Science of Emotion” course is off to a wonderful start! After learning everyone’s favorite emojis and establishing community norms for the class, students discussed the similarities and differences between thinking (cognition) and feeling (emotion). They were then introduced to psychopathology and the idea of heuristics, psychological generalizations based on prior experience...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 1 – Field Ecology (Rising 5th/6th)
Jul. 23, 2018—Dear Parents, We are so excited to meet your kids this week in SAVY and excited to show them the principles of ecology in our course, Land, Sea, and Air! We are a team of five instructors, four graduate students and one postdoctoral fellow, each with expertise on a different topic within ecology. This morning,...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 6, Day 1 – Theory, Criticism, and The Force (Rising 5th/6th)
Jul. 23, 2018—What a wonderful first day! On behalf of my teaching assistant (Emily) and myself, know that it was a pleasure to meet your students and to see their personalities shine. We started with a getting-to-know you ice breaker, an activity that required everyone to share something about themselves (that was not school related) and who...