Last year I found a lab that worked perfectly for introducing the cell cycle unit. It was on Darci Harland's blog STEM Mom, titled Engineering Cell Division-a NGSS Lesson. I didn't even reformat it--just printed it as is.
I laid out a box of random supplies such as yarn, string, beads, pipe cleaners, play dough, modeling clay, and gummy worms. The gummy worms just add an element of fun. I think they look like chromosomes, but my students usually use them for something else in the cell. They happily eat the worms when they finish the project.
We do this before they even start taking notes on the mitosis and meiosis chapters. As they work through the design and questions, we can talk about what they are realizing has to happen in a cell before it can divide. It's so much more than just making a copy of the DNA. This activity also gives me something concrete to refer back to as we delve into the details of the cell cycle.
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