Teaching Tools Series: Cell Cycle Game for Middle School from NobelPrize.org

This is a great game!
http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/2001/cellcycle.html

Requires Flash 5 browser plug-in.

From the Nobel Prize site:

"Control of the Cell Cycle Game

- What happens during ordinary cell division - mitosis?
- What happens when a cell dies inside our body?
- How does the body know when to make new cells?
- What are the different phases in mitosis?
- In what order does cell division occur and what ensures that nothing wrong happens?
- How can a cancer tumor be formed?"

Teaching Tools Series: Cell Cycle Game for Middle School from NobelPrize.org

Teaching Tools Series: Quizlet Flash Card Set for Mitosis

I love Quizlet!  My students love Quizlet even more.  I copied someone else's set on Quizlet, and made this new set--added a few images and Voila!  Flashcards for you.

My students especially like that you can print out flash cards or an alphabetized list...and the GAMES!  Their favorite on the SMARTboard is the Scatter game.  It's a fun way to study.

Teaching Tools Series: Quizlet Flash Card Set for Mitosis

Edible Science Model Projects: Part 5--Cell Cakes Project, Year #2

Last year, we did a Cell Cake Project in the grand tradition of edible science model-making!  It was a tremendous success, and it remains the most popular post on my blog by far!

This year's newest member of the project;  The Bacterial Cell

This year is the second year of the project, and I decided to make it meatier (or cakier, or whatever) by adding a research and presentation component to it, as well as adding critical thinking to the project by adding different cell types and asking students to compare and contrast them.

"Remember, the primary goal of this project is to describe the similarities and differences between animal, plant and bacterial cells. "

-Mrs. Kaplan

This year's Plant Cell

• A descriptive list of the required elements of the Cell Cake Project
• The super-easy and yummy Marshmallow Fondant recipe that kids can use for labeling and other structures.
• Venn diagram organizer for plant, bacterial and animal cells

The Animal Cell--this cake was saved from a crumbly death by a large batch of delicious homemade fondant icing.

Cell Anatomy Resources:

• RESEARCH FORM: http://www.iecc.edu/wvc/lrc/resrws.pdf
• http://www.johnkyrk.com/CellIndex.html--this site has several links in the drop-down menu that could be useful in identifying additional structures or more detailed explanations that would be helpful in making your poster/model.  For example http://www.johnkyrk.com/golgiAlone.html has detailed descriptions of how the Golgi body works.  
• http://www.cellsalive.com/cells/3dcell.htm  has interactive models of all three cell types.
• Interactive diagram of a bacterial cell: http://www.neok12.com/diagram/Microorganisms-01.htm
• Bacterial cell:http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/bacteriacell.html

• Animal cell: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/animalcell.html
• Plant cell: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/cells/plantcell.html
• Inside the Cell PDF booklet (full color illustrations): http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidethecell/pdf/inside_the_cell.pdf
• **Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)--this site can be used as a STARTING PLACE to find information.  Keep in mind, that Wikipedia has gathered it's information from other places...those places are listed (with links) at the bottom of the page.  Those are the links that should be used in your research forms, NOT "en.wikipedia.org".

• http://cellimagelibrary.org/

Edible Science Model Projects: Part 5--Cell Cakes Project, Year #2

Edible Science Model Projects: Part 2--Cell Cakes!

So this year, we made Cell Cakes instead of Jello Cells.
This is a project that you don't have to encourage the kids with--they want to spend all of their time discussing, planning and creating it.  They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of energy for learning about cell anatomy when they are going to be able to eat it!

The criteria for these cakes were:

1. Must contain all of the structures that were on the worksheet that I handed to them: (nucleus, golgi body, ER, rough ER, ribosomes, vacuoles, mitochondria, cell membrane and cell wall for plants) 
2. Must contain a minimum of three additional structures (this requires independent research)
3. Labels are clear and legible
4. Each structure is easily discernible from the others and looks as much like the real thing as is practicable.

The advantage of the Cell Cake over the Jello Cell:

• less messy 
• no heating required
• the cakes can be baked at home and brought to school
• more attractive and tastier product

Disadvantage:

• looks (usually) exactly like the diagrams in the text and online, so students don't get a sense of how all cells look slightly different--the ziploc bag animal Jello Cells took care of that.
• no opportunity for sectioning lessons, which was a MAJOR disadvantage

Edible Science Model Projects: Part 2--Cell Cakes!

Edible Science Model Projects

Montessori schools are big on tradition, and so am I!  Highly anticipated events in my classroom are something I strive for and at my new smaller, private school (I taught in public school for 12 years) it happens naturally.  Since I teach all three grades of science (6-8) and I'm the only science teacher, all of my students remember the major events or activities of all of the other grades and it creates a buzz of anticipation within the student body when they know another one of the events is coming up.

One of these traditions is an Edible Project.  Last year, the 6th years made models of cells out of Jello with candies for the organelles and other structures.  We made plant cells using brick-shaped "tupperware" containers for the cell wall, with ziploc bags as the cell membranes.  The animal cells were made of the same materials but without the containers.  

Great things about Jello cells:

• realism: the plant cells had a rigid structure and could be stacked like a brick wall to make plant tissue, and the animal cells were flexible in their ziploc bags--if you layer them in a large bin as they cool, they molded to each other to create something that resembled epithelial cells (each cell was not identical to the next).
• You could practice sectioning the cells (and teaching the names of sections--longitudinal, saggital, transverse, etc) .  This shows how the diagrams in the text (and everwhere else) are perfect cross sections of the cell and that not every organelle is shown in each section.  It also gives the opportunity show that the same organelle will look very different if you slice it another way.

Bad things about Jello cells:

• the water dissolved some of the candy and coloring
• they tasted and looked unappetizing (to most students, not all)

This year, my students wanted to try Cell Cakes.

Edible Science Model Projects