Activities
Act it Out!
Much as the name implies, this activity involves having the class act out the different stages of cell division. Based on the nature of these stages, this activity is most effective after the class has gone through the content on mitosis. Essentially, the students will be staging the process of mitosis as drama. Holding hands/linking arms would represent a centromere while a thread of yarn or rope can represent the spindle fibres. Each end of the classroom suddenly transforms into a pole of the cell. Have the students show their artistic renditions to the class. Advantages of this activity are numerous. First, it acts as a good solidifying activity to ensure students understand the concept. Second, it allows students who are more visual and/or kinetic learners to emphasize these skills in order to make connections to the content.
Candy-tosis
This activity, much like ‘Act it Out!’ is a good way to solidify the concepts and stages of cell division. In this activity students remain seated in smaller groups. Each group is given a series of gummy worms. Gummy worms bare a very similar resemblance to the shape of chromosomes. As a class, go through each stage of mitosis and meiosis orally with the students having to represent what happens to the chromosomes/chromatid at each stage using the candy. This allows the more visual learners to physically see the difference between chromosomes and chromatid, as well as the areas they move to at each stage in mitosis.
Sock-er
This activity bears a similar resemblance to the one above with one key difference – tying socks together to emulate the behavior of chromosomes/chromatid at the various stages of mitosis. The advantage with this is that if any students have allergies, food sensitivities, or religious dietary constraints (gummy worms are usually not considered kosher for example), then the use of socks is encouraged to reach a similar goal.
Online Games – Mitosis & Meiosis
Check out the “Resources” tab, or click the icon below for a list of great online games surrounding mitosis with short explanations of such in each. These games are great in schools that have easy access to technology.
Cell Cycle Plates
This is a ‘home made’ acidity in the sense that it was modified and designed by the author of this section of this website. Essentially, this activity involves the students creating a hands on ‘cell cycle’ and then applying it to a variety of questions posed by the teacher. These questions will all deal with the amount of time a cell would spend in each phase, depending on the type of cell in question. This of course would require some extra research either by the teacher, or even by the student if this activity were to be extended into an inquiry based or PBL type of activity where students could choose their own types of cells to represent on their ‘cycle’.
Essentially, to create this item, students only need a paper plate, pin, and one piece of coloured paper (as an arrow). Students most likely have made similar items in more primary grades to represent how clocks work; this is an intentional connection as it will allow students to visualize the cell cycle as a ‘cellular clock’. On the plate, students will design and label their appropriate cell cycle to match the amount of time (in relation to the other phases) the cell would spend in each phase. From this point on, the item would be used to represent the answers to various time based questions that would either provided by the student, or the teacher, in relation to it.
An assessment of such can be found in the section below.
Assessments/Evaluations
Below are two forms of assessment that can be used while teaching this unit. The first is a criteria checklist for the “Cell Cycle Plates” activity. The second is a link to a KaHoot style competitive quiz for the students to engage in as a form of simple content review while going through various sections of the unit, although it would be most effective to use at the end of such.
