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SAVY Category

Summer SAVY 2017, Session 1/Day 1- Dive into Design (Rising 1st)

Jun. 12, 2017—Dear Parents, Today was a fabulous first day for our Dive into Design class! I was so pleased to welcome back previous friends from Fall and Spring weekend SAVY courses. We began our day talking about what a concept map is as I modeled one of my own. Students then practiced by brainstorming the concept:...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Designing Shakespeare

Feb. 28, 2017—Team, Our course draws to a close… We’ll meet for one last session, and then – like an insubstantial pageant faded – we’ll go “Poof!” At the end of our last class I compiled the artwork, renderings, and design plots that you have created over the past five weeks. You’ve amassed an impressive amount of...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Chromatography 101

Feb. 28, 2017—We began this week by reviewing our high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) lab results from last week. The students explained that they were able to identify which water contaminant was which by comparing retention times (the amount of time a compound in the mixture stayed on the column) with that of a standard compound. Then they...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Intro to Journalism

Feb. 28, 2017—This week, SAVY journalists dug deeper into ethical issues by examining the consequences of ethical lapses and different forms of “fake” news. The term “fake news” has become a part of our national conversation lately, and has taken on different definitions depending on who uses it.   For the purposes of our class, we used the...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Hydrology 101: The World of Water

Feb. 28, 2017—How is water treated? After a brief introduction to drinking water treatment, the students had a chance to observe the flocculation process with Harpeth River water. Throughout class we could watch the water slowly become clearer and clearer as the alum clumped the particles together. We also explored the filtration process by building small filters...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Writing and Reflection

Feb. 28, 2017—Our fifth day of SAVY was full of creativity, insightful analyses, and dynamic conversations on the uses of diction and pathetic fallacy in poetry and prose. We began by reviewing literary techniques we covered in our past SAVY classes. Together, we defined “synesthesia,” “cliché,” “ekphrastic poetry,” “imagery,” “sensory language,” “concrete language,” “abstract language,” “pathetic fallacy,”...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Robotic Programming

Feb. 28, 2017—Greetings! The kids worked really hard today!  Today was all about them, what they would like to create, and how to achieve that.  We started with a meeting in which they learned about how many degrees were in a circle, and how to write code to make their Spheros go in the directions that they...

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Spring SAVY 2017, Day 5- Awesome Algebra

Feb. 28, 2017—Our hands-on equations program is really helping students to solve equations that have both constants and variables on both sides of the equation. After today’s lesson, students are able to solve equations like 2x + 4 = x + 7  or 5x +1 = 4x + 6 to get both an x and a check. That...

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