SAVY Category
Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 1, “The Making of America: Rebellion, Revolt, and Resolution” (3rd-4th)
Jul. 14, 2025—Hello families! Good news—I cannot believe how many of these students are REALLY INTO HISTORY! It’s a dream class! Thank you for sharing your kids with us–myself and our classroom assistant, Ms. Chandler–this week. I can tell from the very first day that it will be a fantastic adventure back in time. I...
Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 1, “Exploring Epidemiology One Microorganism at a Time” (3rd-4th)
Jul. 14, 2025—Dear SAVY Parents, In Exploring Epidemiology One Microorganism at a Time, the class will be disease detectives slaying microscopic monsters! We are so pleased with the interest and maturity of the class. We mentioned some pretty nasty concepts (diarrhea from cholera, sebum being an eyelash mite’s favorite food, etc.), and the students were...
Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 1, “Water and Weather” (1st-2nd)
Jul. 14, 2025—What Do Scientists Do & What Is Change? Today kicked off an exciting week in our Water and Weather course! Students began the day by getting to know each other and reflecting on how learning can sometimes feel like falling into a “learning pit”—but with effort, we can climb out stronger and smarter. After setting...
Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 1, “Intro to Coding” (1st-2nd)
Jul. 14, 2025— We had a great first day! Today, I gave students a brief history of coding by reading Grace Hopper, Queen of Computer Code by Laurie Wallmark. Students learned the origin of “debugging.” We talked about how Grace Hopper came up with the idea to code using words instead of 0s and 1s. For this course,...
Summer SAVY, Session 5 Day 1, “Encounters with Measurement” (1st-2nd)
Jul. 14, 2025—Hello SAVY Families, We had an amazing first day of SAVY Session Five: Encounters with Measurement. The SAVY mathematicians blew me away with their intelligence, curiosity, and dedication to the study of mathematics. We started the day by positioning ourselves as mathematicians and discussing the responsibilities that each of us would have as a...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Wonders of Electrochemistry” (7th-8th)
Jul. 11, 2025—SAVY Families, What a wonderful final day of Wonders of Electrochemistry! We began the morning reflecting on our biggest takeaways from the week, and it was inspiring to hear how students now recognize electrochemistry in so many real-world applications, from jewelry-making to medical sensors to electric vehicles. Their ability to make connections between complex science and...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Social Determinants of Health: How Communities and Policies Impact Well-Being” (7th-8th)
Jul. 11, 2025—Today marked the final day of our Social Determinants of Health class, and it was a very inspiring week. Over the past few days, our students have worked hard diving deep into data, policy research, and community-focused problem-solving. We started the morning by finishing our policy projects. Students worked in their teams of three again...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Math & Music” (7th-8th)
Jul. 11, 2025—It’s hard to believe our week together has already ended! Today was our final day in Math and Music, and it was packed with creativity, collaboration, and a whole lot of fun. We started the morning diving into matrices, and how they can be used to organize and solve systems of equations. We talked about...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Truth v Perception” (5th-6th)
Jul. 11, 2025—Hello, families and students! We are coming to the end of a fun and activity-packed week, and I am sad to see everyone go! In our teams, we had a trivia competition and incorporated the bonus blog questions, plus our vocabulary and lots of information from the past few days from all the literature we...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Solving the Chemical Spill: Navigating Ecological and Chemical Systems” (5th-6th)
Jul. 11, 2025—Dear Parents, We were sorry to see Solving the Chemical Spill come to an end today. We thoroughly enjoyed your children this week! We sent our chemical to the Vanderbilt lab, and they identified it as hydrochloric acid, but we used apple cider vinegar in our room just to be safe. We learned about HCl...