Skip to main content

Grade 1 Category



Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 4) – Brain Blast

Jun. 30, 2016—Happy Thursday everyone!  Today in class we finished talking about neuronal connections and how fast neurons “talk” to one another. Our model neurons tended to be a little slow so we are thankful our real neurons are so fast!  Ask your student how fast neurons communicate.  We then explored how the brain is so important...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 3) – Modeling Motion

Jun. 29, 2016—We made our first computational simulations of motion today––combining our preliminary work in ViMAP with our previous case of “constant speed robots”. These models use the step-size of the computational turtle to represent the distance traveled in each increment of time and can be used predict total distances traveled in longer, imagined trips of our...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 3) – Brain Blast

Jun. 29, 2016—Today was a very active one for all our brains!  We went deeper into the brain to learn about its specialized cell, the neuron.  Students first investigated the parts of the neuron including the soma, dendrite, axon, axon terminal, and myelin.  They created their own 3D model of various neurons including sensory, motor, interneurons and...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 2) – Modeling Motion

Jun. 28, 2016—Tuesday has sped by us.  The genre of computer programming we are working in is called agent-based programming and modeling, and taking the perspective of the computational agent is key to making sense of the commands.  We’ve been working on “thinking like” the agent. The programming language we are using is called ViMAP (Visual Multi-Agent...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 2) – Brain Blast

Jun. 28, 2016—Our second day of brain blast was filled with gaining more insight into the many parts of the brain including the different lobes of the cerebrum, the brain stem, limbic system, and cerebellum. By exploring the structures of the brain and their corresponding functions, students began to get a sense of the complexity of the...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 1) – Modeling Motion

Jun. 27, 2016—Dear parents and families,  It was a great day in Modeling Motion!  We began with a deep investigation of the motion of a few Lego NXT Robots, programmed to move differently.  Students described the motion of their robot, and others tried to imitate how their robot must have moved, with their bodies.  We gradually began...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 1) – Brain Blast

Jun. 27, 2016—Welcome to the first day of brain blast!  We met our new neuroscientists and introduced them to the lab. After getting to know each other a little better and establishing our lab guidelines with students help, we started asking questions about the brain. This led us to realize we needed to do some research to...

Read more


Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 2, Day 4) – Scripting Stories

Jun. 23, 2016—Today, we spent a lot of time reviewing and adding to the concepts we have discussed this week such as script, adaptation, character, plot, setting, and improvisation. As a class, the students outlined what they knew about these topics and decided what else they wanted to learn for the remainder of the week. Previously we...

Read more