Grade 5 Category
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 3) – Fission and Fusion: Nuclear Engineering 101
Jun. 29, 2016—Day 3 of our SAVY session began with a competitive game of Fission and Fusion Jeopardy which team “Nuclear Turtles” won by demonstrating stellar knowledge they learned from day 2. Students then mapped and presented their nuclear accident fault trees based on the research they gathered during day 2. After discussing the sequence of events...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 3) – Fantasies of Change
Jun. 29, 2016—What makes a change agent? That’s the question we sought to answer today by looking inward, thinking about – and sharing – how we have become people who care enough about a cause to try to change the world. Our sense that something is wrong and our belief that we can do something about it...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 3) – Linguistics in Your Life
Jun. 29, 2016—Today we continued to learn about phonology, particularly the ways that we pronounce different words and phrases together. Later in the morning we got into groups and began to think about Future English–how English will sound in 500 years. Each group came up with their own scenario for what happens to English-speakers in the future...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 2) – Fission and Fusion: Nuclear Engineering 101
Jun. 28, 2016—We kicked off our session about fission with a bang! This morning, the students set off over 100 mousetraps loaded with ping pong balls in less than 20 seconds starting with just a single ping pong ball. We related this experiment to the fission process that occurs with neutrons and uranium atoms in a nuclear...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 2) – Fantasies of Change
Jun. 28, 2016—Our kick-off Movement Moment this morning featured Willy Wonka singing “Pure Imagination,” a reminder that we must be able to imagine a different world before we can begin to bring it into reality – but also that we must be willing to act to create what we’ve found in our imagination. In collective action parlance,...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 2) – Linguistics in Your Life
Jun. 28, 2016—We had a very busy day today learning about phonology, phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This morning we talked about various writing systems. We learned that American English has way more phonemes (sounds) than our alphabet has letters to represent them. The IPA was created as a tool that linguists use to represent...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 1) – Fission and Fusion: Nuclear Engineering 101
Jun. 27, 2016—The theme of our very first Fission and Fusion session was really small things! We learned all about electrons, neutrons, and protons and how they make up the elements and compounds we interact with every day. Using marshmallows and toothpicks, each student made models of some common compounds. In addition to testing our ability to...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 1) – Fantasies of Change
Jun. 27, 2016—We began our class today to the strains of a recording of “We Shall Overcome” from the March on Washington of the Civil Rights Movement. Why were people able to sing “deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome” that day? Because they’d found others who agreed with their vision of the world...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 3, Day 1) – Linguistics in Your Life
Jun. 27, 2016—We introduced our class today with some general discussions on language and misconceptions floating around about it. In the morning we covered differences between language and other forms of communication. After lunch we traveled back in time to hear how English sounded in the past and how it has changed. Later we explored our own...
Summer SAVY 2016 (Session 2, Day 4) – Engineering Policy and Urban Design
Jun. 23, 2016—Today may have been the most spirited day yet! First thing in the morning, we walked across VU’s beautiful campus to the Civil and Engineering Laboratory. We learned about the project that the lab is currently working on – developing the beneficial uses of fly ash and red mud, and testing these industrial by-products for...