Provide students with a slide of an onion root to view under a microscope. Tell students to make sketches of cells in different stages of mitosis. Each student should provide at least five different sketches of cells in different stages on a worksheet. Students must then take their sketches and compare their pictures to the different stages of mitosis and identify which stage of mitosis the cell is experiencing in each sketch.
Break the students into groups of four and provide each group with slides that depict cells going through various stages of mitosis. Ask each group to identify a particular stage of mitosis from the set of slides. For example, in cytokinasis the cell will begin to furrow and pinch off, completing the process of changing one cell into two cells. The group must agree on the cell and stage, after which the teacher will confirm. Give each group another stage of mitosis to identify until all of the stages are completed.
Provide students with drawings or pictures of a cell going through the various stages of mitosis. Students must write a statement detailing what is going on during each stage of mitosis and how it is different from the previous stage. For example, in interphase the chromatin are loosely organized, but in prophase, the next step, the chromatin shorten and condense to create chromosomes. In prophase the nuclear envelope also disappears while it is still present in interphase.
Meiosis is the process of producing four non-identical daughter cells with half the chromosomes of the parent cell. Meiosis occurs in organisms that sexually reproduce. Show students videos of the process of mitosis and meiosis. Then have students list how the two processes are similar. For example, each process starts with a single cell. Students must also determine in what ways the two processes are different. For example, mitosis creates two identical cells while meiosis creates four unique cells.