Grade 5 Category
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 5 – Archetypes and Literature (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 22, 2018—Hello and Happy Friday! Today was our day to try to pull together a week’s worth of learning. Over the last couple of days we’ve done a more focused exploration of a single archetype in order to set up our final projects: student-led presentations on selected archetypes, from water to the jester to the fall. ...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 5 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 22, 2018—On our final day in Puzzles and Problem Solving, we looked at a couple of gold coin problems where students had a certain number of weighings on a balance scale to try to determine which coins were fake. Students quickly solved the nine-coin problem and set to work on the five-coin version. You would think...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Archetypes and Literature (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 21, 2018—Hello all, Today we continued on with our quest for a deeper understanding of specific archetypes. Our focus was – of course — the quest. To start, the students were asked to develop images they associate with the word quest. Students drew swords, and treasure, and heroic types of all sorts. From there we shifted...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 4 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 21, 2018—I was so impressed with the students’ work on the Pirate Problem this morning! This is a problem that my (much!) older students often struggle with, and this class tackled the issues head on and found a solution. It was amazing to see their enthusiasm as they neared the answer and weren’t ready to be...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Archetypes and Literature (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 20, 2018—Hello and Happy Wednesday, During the past two days we worked on developing our understanding of archetypes and our ability to identify them in a variety of contexts. Today, we tightened our focus to look very specifically at a single character archetype: the leader. Our goal was to explore the complexities and possibilities of this...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 3 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 20, 2018—Most of the morning in Puzzles and Problem Solving was spent converting our classroom into an airplane…or at least a room with 13 seats and boarding passes. Consider the following scenario: The first person to board a fully-booked flight drops his or her boarding pass and doesn’t bother to pick it up. The person doesn’t...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 2 – Archetypes and Literature (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 19, 2018—Happy Tuesday! Since yesterday’s session covered identifying archetypes in ads, today we shifted to an exploration of how narrative texts make use of archetypes. Our focus: picture books. Like ads, these employ the shorthand of archetypes to deliver often-times profound messages in very little space. First, we worked as a whole-group to try to unpack...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 2 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 19, 2018—We began class today by delving deeper into the problems studied yesterday. Each day will begin with two questions designed to have the students apply the knowledge learned in the previous day to a new scenario. Today’s questions dealt with the 21-card game and ZipZap, and both questions led to interesting discussions about factors, multiples,...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 1 – Archetypes and Literature (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 18, 2018—Hello! Welcome to Encounters with Archetypes! This morning we established the different kinds of encounters we’d be exploring – those with situations, individuals, and ideas– and began our own encounters. Our situation: the first day of a new class with a lot of individuals who don’t know one another. So, we set about correcting that...
Summer SAVY 2018: Session 2, Day 1 – Puzzles and Problem Solving (Rising 5th and 6th)
Jun. 18, 2018—The Puzzles and Problem Solving class first investigated the Ultimatum Game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game) and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner’s_dilemma). The students then played a 2-player card game, attempting to determine the winning strategy. The problem goes like this: “Given a deck of 21 cards, players alternate turns by taking one, two, or three cards (that is, you...