Biology Lab—Mitosis and Meiosis

Last week for biology lab class, I brought out the Play-Doh  and had the students reenact the processes of mitosis and meiosis with the dough “chromosomes” and paper “cells”. Hands-on activities seem to engage them well and help them understand the material better. I’m glad I had the Play-Doh inspiration!

Forming chromosome duplicates

Cell Division during Mitosis

Then we took out the microscope and identified and drew phases of mitosis in Ascaris cells. They looked briefly at the Allium root tip cell slide, but we ran of out time, so they didn’t draw those cells.

We’ll be taking a break until January. The students will skip ahead and do Module 9 (Evolution) on their own since there are no experiments in that chapter. In January, we’ll learn about Genetics and do some fruit fly genetics experiments.