In this assignment, students produced their own model of an animal or plant cell, either by writing and illustrating a children's book or by creating a 3-D model of a cell using materials they gathered or made. This project gave students the opportunity to engage with the content and visualize the parts of the cell using their preferred method of writing or drawing or creating a 3-D model of either a plant or animal cell. Students who made 3-D models were required to write up a description of the functions of each of the cell organelles and students who made stories were assigned to incorporate the functions of each organelle into their story.
It was surprising to see how excited students were to submit their assignments on the due date. Some students turned in their cell stories and models before school started and many students were excited to dig into the edible cell models! I could tell many students were motivated to engage with the content once they were assigned this creative project. This project gave students freedom to be creative and utilize their verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, and inter- or intra-personal intelligences (Gardner, 1991 as cited in Bransford et al., 1999). The goal of this visualization was to “promote learning and understanding” (Vavra et al., 2011, p. 27) and also to serve as a tool for students to simplify the structure and function of a cell into their own more familiar words and materials. The evidence from this project mostly supports my theory of applied learning, although I was disappointed that many students did not complete the written organelle description, which was assigned to give students a better understanding of the visualization they created (Vavra et al., 2011). In the future, I would like to analyze formative and summative assessments more thoroughly after the completion of this project to look for any differences in content knowledge between students who completed and those who did not complete the written part of the project.
It was surprising to see how excited students were to submit their assignments on the due date. Some students turned in their cell stories and models before school started and many students were excited to dig into the edible cell models! I could tell many students were motivated to engage with the content once they were assigned this creative project. This project gave students freedom to be creative and utilize their verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, and inter- or intra-personal intelligences (Gardner, 1991 as cited in Bransford et al., 1999). The goal of this visualization was to “promote learning and understanding” (Vavra et al., 2011, p. 27) and also to serve as a tool for students to simplify the structure and function of a cell into their own more familiar words and materials. The evidence from this project mostly supports my theory of applied learning, although I was disappointed that many students did not complete the written organelle description, which was assigned to give students a better understanding of the visualization they created (Vavra et al., 2011). In the future, I would like to analyze formative and summative assessments more thoroughly after the completion of this project to look for any differences in content knowledge between students who completed and those who did not complete the written part of the project.
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Several different 3-D cell projects can be seen above. It was interesting to see the variety of materials students chose to represent cells.
This student wrote about plant cells, creating a more literal description of the cell and its organelles.
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These students used the overall analogy of a mall to describe a cell and described each organelle as a part of the mall or employee of the mall. This story may capture the attention of students otherwise disinterested in cells.
This book was designed to explore the cells of Larry the Plant! The student then 'zoomed' inside Larry to get a look inside his cells.
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This is the description of the cell project that students were assigned.
