Our most recent unit in science was all about cloning, or more scientifically known as asexual reproduction. I understand that sounds weird but it isn’t, it’s actually really cool! Many organisms use a process called mitosis to make identical offspring. This is what our goal was in science class. We hoped to successfully clone not one but two different plant species. Now for some of us this was a huge success and for others not so much. Jackson and I were partners and we had half success. This brings me to the first curricular competency I plan to talk about.

Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

So as I mentioned Jackson and I had a half success. While one of our dandelions had great root growth we had trouble getting anything from our blackberry plant. However both times we followed all the right steps and knew what we were doing. Im guessing the blackberry plant just struggled with the weather changes.

Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions, including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world. 

I believe Jackson and I’s experimental document shows this competency. We gave ourselves a driving question and then answered it with our in detail plan. We also included a picture with my own drawings on it to show where we should cut the stems. This document had been put together very well. The dandelion one was also organized but not as good as when we took the blackberry one into our own hands.

Transfer and apply learning to situations

In one of our classes we learned the steps you have to take in order to make a tissue sample slide. At first I was very confused but then we had to make a keynote animation showing the steps. After making that animation I was all set for the next day when we did our practice. I was the first one done and ended up helping other people. I transferred my learning from the steps on the document to actually doing it in class. I also found making tissue sample slides very fun and enjoyed it each time we did it.

Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon.

After making our tissue sample slides we had to find each stage of mitosis in the microscope to see if our plants were growing. I was able to identify all the stages and then put them into a very neat document where you can see the drawn diagrams and the real life photos I took. Sam and I worked together to find these stages as well since Jackson was away on one of the days I wasn’t.

Overall I really enjoyed this unit ad think I learned a lot from it. I realized this subject was actually pretty exciting to me and has made me think about taking biology in grade 11 and 12. Below are some mitosis photos from the microscope.