Cell City
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS!
What is community? Why do we need communities?
What makes human needs different from other animal kingdom needs?
How do cities & communities mirror the smallest living unit: cellular composition?
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This opening project asks you to determine the role of community and explore!
Students will create for exhibition:
● Cell City model & a written description​
of how their city mirrors a cellular
structure.
This will include a map of your city, city planning documents, building costs and
3-D city structure.
● Class Video: ​
Students will complete a Mad-Libs exercise about their Individual and
community Identity. We’ll video our answers and put them together in a video
called, “Being in the 6th Grade.”
● Comic Strip + Artist Statement:​
Each student will have to create a short comic
strip that highlights one particular character. This character will be their
idealized self (and can be as truthful or fantastic as they want!). Their
character must live within their group’s Cell City, and must address both living in
a community or the need for a community.
The artist statement will be a short 2 paragraph explanation of (1) why they
chose to represent themselves in such a way, and how it ties back to their
identity reflections, (2) a short description of how their comic character fits into
the Cell City.
Students will learn:
In Science:
● Living vs. Non-living, Cellular Structure, Cells to Organisms
In Math:
● Number Sense, Fraction and Decimal Operations
In History:
● Cosmic beginnings, Early Human, Mesopotamia
● Note Taking, Paraphrasing, Quoting, Summary
In ELA:
● Novels: ​
The Circuit​
& ​
The Giver
● Storyboarding, Character development, the art of revision, Final Comic Draft
Topics Covered:
Math
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Factors and Multiples, Common Factors
Factorization
Distributive Property
Ratios vs. Fractions
Unit Rates
Number Lines: Integers, Mixed Numbers, Decimals
Science
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Living vs. Nonliving: Bacteria vs. Viruses
Cells into Organisms
Animal Cells vs. Plant Cells
Detailed animal and plant cell structure
Cell City Construction/Research/Writing Analogies
English
● The Circuit​
: Locate Quotes on character identity, Journal and Reflection
● The Giver:​
Storyboards, Sketches/Revisions on Comic Strip
History
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Field Trips
● Central Library
● IB Pier Beach Clean Up
● Ruben H. Fleet Museum: Discovering DNA
Cosmic Beginnings
Early Humans
Mesopotamia
Annotation, Note taking and Summary Skills
Final Exhibition Due Date:
Friday, November 6th (11/6/15)