We just finished a project that combined two subjects together! In this project we were learning about diseases and how they interact with the body, and about the age of exploration. The final product was a comic book about an explorer from the 1400’s – 1600’s who catches a disease. Our focus was, What is the focus of global exploration? How do cells and diseases interact? If you want to see the final product you can scroll to the bottom. Before creating the comic we had a lot of learning to do!
To start we were learning different things in each subject. In Scimatics we started by creating a mind map on the things we already know about cells and diseases. At the time I didn’t know a lot of detailed things about cells and how they react to diseases. In Humanities we were reading comic books and looking at the layout of how they are made and if there are certain ways the author shows the passing of time. I think reading the comics was really helpful in learning different styles and ways of of writing comic books. Down here is some pages from the comic book that I found interesting in how they showed the passing of time. There is also a photo of my mind map that has been updated with things I’ve learned during the project.
After reading some of the comic books we had to make an analysis chart, this show Connection. It is showing that you can personally connect the text that you are reading or listening to. The comic books I read were very different from my life so connecting to them was harder for me. If you want to read my analysis on the comic books I read click here.
After learning a bit about each topic it was time to decide what disease we wanted to research and what explorer we wanted to write our comic on. For our disease we created a Disease wanted poster. It had information on the disease we picked to show that we had a basic understanding of it. We did the same thing for our explorer, instead though showed on more of a chart. Creating the chart was to show historical significance, what we wrote on there would help determine what is worth remembering. What makes a certain explorer more significant than the other, that was what we were looking into. Early Explorer Research Sheet.
Once we had done a lot of the learning it was time to start planning what our comic would actually look like. We created a story board that explained how the cells interacted with the disease and where the explorer went. A competency being assessed for this was scientific communication. Meaning, we show that we can communicate using scientific language. I think that I did an ok job on this, I could have used more scientific words that would have explained in more detail what was happening.
After making the story board all that is left is creating the actual comic! We were using an app called Comic Life, which has templates that you can use. In our final comic we had to try and use everything we had just learned and turn it into a story. I had chosen to write about John Cabot on his third voyage, this is the voyage he doesn’t come back from, but no one knows why for sure. I liked that because it left room for me to imagine some of the details. In the comic he gets Typhoid Fever while he’s traveling to North America. To find out the rest you can read the comic here.
During this project I learned that the historical significance of an explorer isn’t just based upon what they did, it is also based on how people in society has viewed them. There could be an explorer who is the first to go somewhere and claim the land, but then a second or third explorer goes and they are more well know because they were simply sent by the king this time. I think I definitely learned about why explorer chose to go out when they know the risk is high. I also learned more about how cells interact with the body, and that the body reacts differently to different diseases. It was fun to be able to create a story that was based on true events and had the same outcome, but was twisted by the disease I choses John Cabot would have!
“It is human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice really; it’s an imperative.”
-Michael Collins