SAVY Category
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...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Intro to Neurobiology” (5th-6th)
Jul. 11, 2025—We began the day with our students continuing to work on their final projects in a computer lab. Our final project invited students to choose a topic that interests them and is relevant to neurobiology or psychology. Our students worked/researched on questions/issues like what the topic is about, history, challenges, and future directions of research...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “Tremendous Transformations in Writing” (3rd-4th)
Jul. 11, 2025—What a week! It has been a true pleasure to spend these five days learning and creating with your precious children. Today was a special day because we transformed from mere mortals into accomplished authors! Ms. A-G, in fact, also transformed today–she became The Story Fairy! Wings, wand, and everything. It was a fun day! ...
Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 5, “The Science of Senses” (3rd-4th)
Jul. 11, 2025—We had two BIG projects today! For our in-class project, students considered the myth of King Midas and were challenged to invent a way to keep him from turning his food and daughter into gold. This was an extension of our previous lesson on touch that incorporates the Design Thinking Process. We guided the students...