Grade 4 Category
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 5 – Chemical Spill, Mr. Knorr (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 20, 2018—Hello Parents! It was so nice to finally meet you all this afternoon at open house! We had an eventful Friday discussing a few jobs in science in more depth. We learned what volcanologists, zoologists, geographers, and paleontologists do! We also watched a cute video of a baby panda bear harassing his zoologist keeper J...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 5 – Chemical Spill, Miss Raff (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 20, 2018—Thank you for coming to our open house! We really enjoyed showing you everything we learned this week. We hope you had fun seeing all the connections your scientist made between chemistry and the environment. Your students are incredibly bright. It was a joy to have them in class! Miss Jessica and Miss Emily ...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 4 – Poetic Play (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 19, 2018—Happy Thursday in Poetic Play! This morning, we discussed Found Poems: poems that take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. We talked about how Found Poems are the literary equivalent of visual collages, and where we might take text as inspiration in the world: newspaper articles, street signs, grafitti,...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 4 – Chemical Spill, Mr. Knorr (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 19, 2018—Hello Parents! Today was quite an eventful day. In the morning lab session we continued monitoring the health of our flowering plants that we had watered with an acidic solution the day before. Preliminary results show that plants receiving higher concentrations of acid are less healthy than the plants that received a more diluted solution....
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 4 – Chemical Spill, Miss Raff (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 19, 2018—Today, your scientists tackled another part of the scientific method: communicating results. We read a kid-friendly version of an article investigating the effect of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on fiddler crabs. Your bright students were able to identify the question, hypothesis, independent and dependent variables, controls, and constants in the experiment. They synthesized information...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 3 – Poetic Play (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 18, 2018—Happiest Wednesday of Poetic Play! The week is whipping by! This morning, students worked on a creative writing exercise with “PoetryCubes” (adapted from the wonderful game, StoryCubes.) Students were each given a special “image-dice,” and asked to roll their dice, choose a category on the board (each category included one of the five senses, and a...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 3 – Chemical Spill, Mr. Knorr (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 18, 2018—Hello Parents! Day 3 is in the books! We had another great day using the scientific method and our understanding of chemistry to help Vanderbilt clean up its chemical spill site. In the lab session, we saw the awesome power of chemical reactions! We tested the pH of an acidic solution and then added baking...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 3 – Chemical Spill, Miss Raff (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 18, 2018—Due to recent events (the chemical spill!!), we spent the morning learning about different types of chemical spills. Your scientists worked as research teams to clean up an oil spill. They had to purchase clean-up supplies while staying within their $1,000,000 research budget. They learned that cleaning up an oil spill is not easy: it...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 2 – Poetic Play (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 17, 2018—Welcome to Day 2! In today’s class, we focused on rhyme and inventive language. Students learned key terms of the day, including: alliteration, rhyme, end rhyme, slant rhyme, rhyme scheme, metaphor, similie, and imagery. Students spent the morning with a brief communal writing activity, titled, “Exquisite Corpse.” This is a traditional poetry game where each...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 5, Day 2 – Chemical Spill, Mr. Knorr (Rising 3rd/4th)
Jul. 17, 2018—Hello Parents! I’m happy to report that your budding environmental scientists have been doing an amazing job in the classroom and outside! They have been picking up high school level chemistry and have a firm grip on the structure of atoms, elements, ions, chemicals, and environmental systems. I am VERY impressed by their deep understanding...