We’ve just completed a project on clones! Well, not the kind you’re thinking of. We researched how to clone and grow plants, and how different types of organisms, including single cells, grow. To describe how I did in this project, I’ll choose four curricular competencies for Grade 9 Science, and explain how I used them in this project! 

The first curricular competency I’ll focus on is ‘Collaboratively and individually plan, select, and use appropriate investigation methods, including field work and lab experiments, to collect reliable data (qualitative and quantitative)’. That’s a lot of words! But what it means is that my partner Kiera and I worked together to collect the information we needed for this project. In this case, the information was images of mitosis happening, which we found on the microscope slides we created. Over the course of this project, we have made a lot of microscope slides. We’ve made slides for our cloned dandelions, slides for onions, and slides for daisy plants, which is the plant me and my partner decided to clone ourselves. I think I demonstrated this competency really well during this project because we were working on the microscopes, creating the slides, and working outside for a good majority of the time we spent on this project, and we used these methods to collect the data we needed.

Another competency that I think I used really well was ‘transfer and apply learning to new situations.’ This was really important when we were creating microscope slides with daisies, when we’d only been taught how to create microscope slides with dandelions. In fact, this competency applied to a lot of things we did during this project. We extracted living daisy plants from the ground, after learning how to extract dandelion plants. We also went through with the cloning of the daisies because we knew how to clone dandelions. We split up the daisies into pieces and planted them separately. This was slightly different from the cloning of the dandelions, during which we had cut the roots and buried them. It was really helpful to have the experience with the dandelions, but we were also able to experiment with a new type of plant. Altogether, we extracted our learning and applied it to new situations just like we extracted those daisies out of the ground and applied them to microscope slides. 

The next competency I think we used really well was ‘Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon.’ This was when, once we had found the mitosis, we photographed it and arranged it to show a thorough timeline of a cell experiencing mitosis. We had seen diagrams of mitosis before, but it was difficult to figure out what mitosis really looked like. First, we had to figure out what the nuclei actually look like under a microscope, then figure out which cells were actually experiencing mitosis. The timeline we created, showing mitosis, also compared it to a diagram of mitosis, and had separate sections for the daisy roots and the onion skins that we looked at. I think I used this competency well during this project because the photos are very easy to understand, and provide a clear image of mitosis.

The last competency that I’ll focus on is ‘select and use appropriate equipment, including digital technologies, to systematically and accurately collect and record data.’ This competency is similar to the first one in this post, but it matters too. We had to use a lot of technology to collect the data we were looking for. The data we were looking for were images of mitosis in plants, but before we could take those images, we needed to go through a checklist of several steps. The first was to find the plant that we wanted to find mitosis in. Then, we would prepare the slide. This took a lot of steps, and we even created this small animation to show what steps to take!

Then, we put the finished slide under a microscope, and using the wonderful microscope skills that we learned last year, we found mitosis on the slides! We were ultimately very successful, because we used this competency so well. 

Thanks for reading my blog post!