Grade 6 Category
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 3 – Spies and Conspiracies (Grades 5/6)
Oct. 8, 2019—Our historians really had some exciting travels through the 1780s these last few weeks. Thank you for sharing such creative and sharp minds with me! If they are interested in looking at more at the sources we used in class two Saturdays ago, they are both open access and available at: https://full-english-books.net/english-books/full-book-an-artist-in-treason-the-extraordinary-double-life-of-general-james-wilkinson-read-online-chapter-7 and https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07162014-131340/unrestricted/Kolb.pdf. We kicked off our...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 3 – Robotic Engineering (Grades 5/6)
Oct. 8, 2019—We wrapped up our fall session this past Saturday in Robotic Engineering by building a carousel with the EV3 Mindstorm. The students learned about shafts, gears, and the touch sensor options in Mindstorm. After they successfully built their carousel, the students programmed it to spin and turn on and off with a touch sensor. Then...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 2 – Strength and Structure of Engineering Materials (Grades 5/6)
Sep. 30, 2019—This Saturday was our day of failure! We covered two types of sudden catastrophic failures. The first failure type we covered was buckling. Buckling strength is affected by many things, not just the material selected. To explore buckling strength, we got into groups and made beams with different heights, cross sectional shapes, and materials. Ask...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 2 – Spies and Conspiracies (Grades 5/6)
Sep. 30, 2019—What a great day! Our detective historians brought their A-game to today’s challenging conspiracies. Today, we explored Conspiracies in the Era of Confederation, basically the 1780s. We started with a little bit of music from Hamilton to remind us of last week, “Yorktown,” and then turned to “What Comes Next” to ask our leading question and...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 2 – Robotic Engineering (Grades 5/6)
Sep. 30, 2019—Today was a busy, but productive day in Robotic Engineering! We started the day with activity called “Build What I Can’t See.” Each team had one person who could see the drawing and a runner. The runner would describe to his/her team what to draw without telling them what they were drawing. It was a...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 1 – Strength and Structure of Engineering Materials (Grades 5/6)
Sep. 24, 2019—Hello SAVY Parents! What a fun first day we had in Strength and Structure. This Saturday we started with an investigation of the foundations of strengths and structures, materials science! We learned how different bond types (ionic, covalent, and metallic) result in different material types, all of which serve different functions in building. The three...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 1 – Spies and Conspiracies (Grades 5/6)
Sep. 24, 2019—Greetings, Parents! This week, our SAVY students learned the keys to becoming historians and began delving more deeply into the critical but under-appreciated era of the Early Republic (Early US 1780-1800, roughly). We kicked off our day with introductions and setting our classroom rules. I asked our group to answer the following question: if you...
Fall SAVY 2019: Day 1 – Robotic Engineering (Grades 5/6)
Sep. 24, 2019—Dear SAVY parents, These future programmers and engineers were busy today! We didn’t waste any time diving in to our content today, as we began the day with a discussion of the engineering design process and used it to build our first EV3 robot cars. Students worked with a team and had the freedom to...
SAVY 2019: Session 6, Day 5 – Power of Poetry (Rising 5th/6th)
Jul. 26, 2019—Dear Parents: Happy Friday, and a very happy, celebratory, and rejuvenating last day of Poetic Play to all! I am, as ever, grateful to all the students this week for creating such a wonderful class community of respect, awe, and courage in themselves as rising writers, and in the world around them! Thank you, thank...
SAVY 2019: Session 6, Day 4 – Stellar Astronomy (Rising 5th/6th)
Jul. 25, 2019—Your students were scientists today! In preparation for making a poster with an answerable research question, students first explored “Dr. G’s Approved Websites” – each student picked three of the 15 approved ones to complete some explorative questions. Then students designed an answerable research question, carried out the research, made a conclusion, and designed a...