The President of the Cell!

Organelle Wars! The President of the Cell

 

Ok so first of all, I did not come up with this idea on my own (I wish I did, but I didn't). In the spring I went to the NSTA conference in Boston. Where I heard @mr_graba talk about this project and how he used Twitter in his high school biology classroom. It is actually a very cool story of how "real scientists" started to interact with his students, but that is his story, not mine. Here is a blog post that tells that story.

I thought that the project sounded awesome and I wanted to try it out. I am not comfortable with turning my 7th graders loose on Twitter just yet (maybe I will get there someday, but I am not there yet). I knew that I needed to make our own version of Organelle Wars. So here it is:

The Premise:
The Nucleus needs to retire. Who is going to replace the nucleus as The President of the Cell?

The Project: 
1.Students were assigned an organelle and had to research the structure and function of the organelle (so far, a boring old cell project). 
2.Then they had to campaign for their organelle to be elected "President of the Cell" (getting fun now). 
3.They also had to create smear campaigns against other organelles. This is where the students totally bought-in to this project! It is also the part of the project that ensures that they learn about other organelles in the cell, not just their assigned organelle (best cell project ever!).

I realized that this project was different from any other cell project when on the first day of research, in more than one of my classes, students started darting around the room making alliances with other organelles that they worked together with in the cell. They were planning who they would smear and how they would team up! They were doing this on the sly when they thought I wasn't looking. It even got a little out of hand and I had to remind them that they should be researching, not making alliances! I have never seen students this excited to learn about cell parts. 

On day 2 of the project at the conclusion of research stage I went around the room and asked each group to tell one thing about why their organelle is important. One boy raised his hand and said "This project is impossible because all of the organelles are important. The cell needs them all." All of the kids nodded and I my teacher heart fluttered to see them reach this understanding so early in the project.  

Parts of the Project:

Campaign Posters- I showed some examples of political posters, we discussed the elements of successful posters, and I let them have at it. Posters were hung in one of the main hallways of the school.

Campaign Advertisement- We are a 1:1 iPad classroom so I decided that instead of speeches, we would use the iPad to shoot a political ad. We watched some samples, then they storyboarded their ad, then they filmed. The ads had to be 1 minute long. 

Discussion Boards- I set up discussion boards in our Schoology class. This is where the smearing took place. I gave them some guidelines for how many times they needed to post and what made a "good smear" (not just saying "ribosomes stink" but actually referring to their structure and/or function "Who needs protein anyway? Ribosomes stink"). They took it to another level and started making memes. I love memes! 

Here is some of what went on in the discussion boards:

The discussion boards were fun for the kids and helped me identify misconceptions.

We have since moved on and I introduced a new project to my students the other day. The first question they asked was if they were going to get to make smear campaigns again. They loved it! And I think they will remember it.