This lesson is for : Grade 9,Grade 10,Grade 11:
Summary
Finding ways for students to interact with microscopic living things is a challenge that requires creativity and innovation. Your task is to use your imagination, your creativity and your communication skills to produce an interview with a cell. Your interview will help answer the following three important questions: What are the structures that make up plant and animal cells? How do these important cell structures work and what do they do? How do the organelles work with each other to help the cell perform its daily functions to help the whole organism survive? This endeavor will be a multistep process where students will take charge of their learning in order to produce a product that has an impact in the classroom and can serve as a learning tool for other students. Students will form self-initiated teams of two. Once in these teams they will develop four essential questions that will drive their research about cell organelles and lead the questions/answers they will record. They will research collaboratively with the use of Google Docs where they will record their answers to the self developed essential interview questions. Google Docs will also be used by the students to write their script for the interview with a cell. Students will use ThingLink and SoundCloud to produce an interactive interview with the cell. Students will reflect on their interactive interview by viewing other student examples and providing feedback in the form of a comment. All interviews are posted on the web for students and community members to view and discuss.
TIPC Ratings
Research & Information Fluency
Rating: Approaching – Explanation: 9th grade Biology students learn about interviews by watching different interview examples and participating in group discussions. Students research what makes a good interview and what are the responsibilities of each party in the interview. They then use this research answers to self generated essential questions. Students are tasked with developing the questions, researching the answers and linking back to their sources. Through their research and class discussions a rubric is created to reflect their findings.
Communication & Collaboration
Rating: Approaching – Explanation: The students learn about interviews by researching and participating in group discussions. Students are provided with a template that is shared among the team members so each team member can research, write and discuss collaboratively. Team members work on self selected pairs in which they decide their roles in the interview process. Each activity in the lesson allows the teams to work together to complete the task. The last activity for students involves them using their peers project to answer questions.
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
Rating: Not observed – Explanation: Not a focus of this lesson.
Creativity & Innovation
Rating: Ideal – Explanation: This lesson provided students with the opportunity to look within themselves and create an online presence that reflected their thoughts and feelings while still using facts about the different parts of the cell. Students were presented with the following questions:
*What are the structures that make up plant and animal cells?
*How do these structures work and what do they do?
*How do these structures work with each other to help the cell perform its daily functions to
help the whole organism survive?
They took these questions researched and then produced an interactive image that connected them personally to the material. By allowing students to choose their partners and to have a voice in the process they were able to personally connect to the content while being engaged. Students let their creative side shine during the recording activity of this project. They took different personalities, used different accents and even starting acting it out their parts. In the end, the students were able to synthesize existing and self-generated knowledge to create a new and unique product.
Student Artifact
Lesson Materials
