Title: Building
and Working with Plant Cells in Minecraft
Problem: Students
will be required to build an accurate 3-D model of different plant cells.
Importance: The project will help students
understand what the different parts of plant cells are, their relative size and
proportions to other parts of the plant cell.
They will be required to do various calculations, but because I am not
totally familiar with plant cells, I am not 100% sure what I will have them do
for the math portion.
Students: I am working with a Biology teacher
who has the same students as I do for Algebra I. It is a group of 24 freshman students who are
in the CHOICE program, which is a program that focuses on community and helping
students that usually aren’t successful in school.
Math: I am not sure what math will be involved
yet. I know that I will at least be able
to have students calculate the volume of the different pieces of the cell and
possibly have them do calculations by requiring them to have the cells be to
scale. This is usually a geometry topic,
but I will have these students again for Geometry next year, so I would be
willing to spend time with it this year and possibly not as much next
year.
Science: The majority of the lesson will
be Science and plant cells. This is where I will rely heavily on the teacher I
will be working on this unit with.
Engineering: Students will have to make a plan on how
they will build the cell in Minecraft.
They might have to make a plan before beginning to build. They will also have to check their progress
while they are building the cells and determine what adjustments need to be
made.
Technology: Students will be using calculators ahead
of time and then computers and Minecraft for the creation of their plant cells.
Sharing: Most likely I will take pictures
and videos of the process. The main
video will most likely be a video of the students in Minecraft creating their
plant cells.
Measurement - both volume and surface area come to mind for sure. Figuring out how big a normal plant cell is, and then calculating the scale inside of Minecraft seems good. Figuring out roughly how many cells arranged vertically it would take to grow a plant X number of centimeters high sounds like fun.
ReplyDeleteWonderful that you are collaborating with a science teacher! Really excited to see how this works out.
ReplyDeleteI like Colin's suggestions above about scaling, and thinking about how many cells it would take for a particular height. Then perhaps they could gather samples of real plants, weigh them, and then try to figure out how many cells are in their sample using density (test their solution?)
.