Grade 5 Category
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 3- Intro to Journalism
Feb. 14, 2017—This week, SAVY Journalism students moved from writing news stories to writing feature stories. While the main goal of news stories is to inform, feature stories seek to inform and entertain or give further context to an issue. Our class focused on a very common form of feature journalism – the profile. Students started the...
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 2- Designing Shakespeare
Feb. 6, 2017—WOW! Thank you for an impassioned, zany, madcap class session! We read more of the first scene of the Tempest, and together we remediated the text into design imagery: in this case, we imagined what the excitement of the tempest itself might feel like. We began to negotiate use of evocative binaries. It’s helpful to...
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 2- Chromatography 101
Feb. 6, 2017—This week in Chromatography 101 we began by reviewing the three components of chromatography and discussing some of the limitations of paper chromatography (the technique we used last week to separate ink components and determine which pen had forged part of a check). The students pointed out that not only were there limitations to what...
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 2- Intro to Journalism
Feb. 6, 2017—This week in Intro to Journalism, we continued learning about newswriting by putting our writing, interviewing, and critical thinking skills into practice. Students wrote their very own breaking news stories based on a prompt: they were asked to imagine that students in their school had received a letter from the principal on the last day...
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 1- Designing Shakespeare
Jan. 31, 2017—Dear Designing Shakespeare Students: Thank you for our first session! It was a pleasure to spend Saturday morning with such a mix of new friends and familiar faces, and I enjoyed learning about each and every one of you: whether it be your nearly-unanimous love for books, your large menagerie of pets, or your apparent need...
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 1- Chromatography 101
Jan. 31, 2017—We had a wonderful first day of SAVY discussing the practical uses and basic components of chromatographic systems. Chromatography is used to separate complex mixtures of molecules/chemicals into their individual components. As a class, we brainstormed reasons why people in various professions might want to use this technique. We developed quite the list, ranging from...
Spring SAVY 2017, Day 1- Intro to Journalism
Jan. 31, 2017—Intro to Journalism students kicked things off by talking about the changing definitions of “journalist” in our society. As one student put it, journalists used to be “men in gray suits and hats going after the story,” or, as another said, “someone behind a desk reading the news on TV.” But thanks to technology, the...
Fall SAVY 2016 (Day 5) – From the Page to the Stage: Novel to Script to Production
Oct. 24, 2016—Coming soon!
Fall SAVY 2016 (Day 5) – Pathogens and Protectors: The Science of the Immune System
Oct. 24, 2016—Our 5th week began with more brainstorming around how to treat allergies and organ transplant recipients, and we discussed current strategies with their shortcomings in each case (ask students about induced pluripotent stem cells or allergy shots). While we have talked a lot about the cells involved in the immune response, we spent time this...
Fall SAVY 2016 (Day 5) – Creative Writing: (Re)Imagining the Monstrous
Oct. 24, 2016—We began our penultimate SAVY class by looking even more closely at the role of sympathy in the classical literature we have read. In pairs, students considered the questions: Who is the most sympathetic character we’ve read so far? Who is the most empathetic? Is it possible to sympathize with someone with whom you disagree?...