Mitosis Performance lesson

Mitosis is a fundamental process in eukaryotic biology. This lesson is designed to give students an extremely firm grasp of the mitotic process and its continuous nature, because they literally act out the sequence themselves, from memory, using pipe cleaners to represent chromosomes, and whiteboard markers to show the changing cell structures (centrosomes, membranes, etc) as the cell moves through the sequence. The quality of the performance can be summatively assessed, using the mark grid supplied as a separate document.

**Curriculum Links: **

IB Biology 1.6 (Cell Division), 3.2 (Chromosomes), usable for IGCSE/MYP.

Recommended supplies:

• A large set of different colored “pipe cleaners” (light steel wire covered with fuzz; if these are not available in your country, bread ties or narrow electrical wire can substitute).
• A class set of mini-whiteboards (the lesson can be run with one mini-whiteboard only, or even with paper if pencil is used to draw the cell structures, but paper is not recommended since the constant erasing is laborious).
• Whiteboard markers
• Class set of scissors

Procedure:

A very detailed procedure (5 pages) with diagrams is included in the download.

Note: an Excel version of the mark grid is also included in case you want to modify the point values.