When the rubric says "cube"...

by PC Smart
sandbox serendipity (my art blog)

For those without school-age kids, a rubric is a set of guidelines for an assignment/project. My daughter had Biology this year and this assignment was to create a cube where each side contained something different about a specific body system, she had the respiratory system.
The cube could have been any size 6x6 or larger. Because she wanted a solid base, we found a 'memory cube' at Michaels (wooden cube) to build upon. In the past we have used styrofoam cubes and cube shaped boxes. This cube assignment seems to be a common rubric from elementary up to high school level.
The hardest part of this assignment was the info gathering....it took my daughter over a week. (most of the info was not in her bio book). Then she had to come up with ways to get all that info on a 6x6 cube. Being a child of a crafter, she turned to my papercrafting how -to books to find ways to incorporate creativity with the huge amount of info needed on each side (creativity was being graded also).

side 1 - diagram the system with labels (had to be hand drawn but could be traced) maria used tracing paper and layered it over a printed label)
side 2 - description of the system. maria added an image in the background (opacity at 40%)
side 3 - compare the human system with that of another organism (maria did a bird). she used the file folder method to show the differences/similarities/diagram of alternate system
side 4 - list 5 diseases of this system (maria did a pop out page)
side 5 - describe how this system interacts with the other body systems (maria did a wheel for this one, as you turn the wheel, another system appears in the window)
side 6 - list 10 interesting facts about the system (maria did 11 by using the word respiratory and finding facts starting with each letter)