Hey there! Welcome back to my blog. Time for another Scimatics unit finished! This is our last science unit of the year, unfortunately. But we’ll be starting another unit very soon! Our big idea for this unit was “cells are derived from cells.” We studied asexual and sexual reproduction, mitosis and meiosis, and other cellular functions. This unit was a little bit different than the others in the fact that we didn’t really create a large project, but conducted many different small research projects to learn about our topics!

To begin as always, here’s our Unit Start Mind Map. I’ve been able to answer most every question I had at the beginning of this unit! After making this map, we went on to do some Khan Academy work, where we learned about several topics, like mitosis, meiosis, asexual and sexual reproduction, chromosome structures, etc. After the Khan Academy lessons, we dug up some dandelions to begin our first of a couple cloning processes. I wasn’t actually here for this part as I was sick, but my partner Anika took cuttings from these dandelions and planted them to clone the dandelions, hence the name of this post and our unit!

After we had finished cloning these dandelions, we went on to clone our own plants. Anika and I chose a dahlia, which is a very beautiful flower! I made cuttings of the original dahlia and planted it, and it was kept in a little greenhouse area in the school. While we were waiting for our dahlia clones to grow, we decided to dissect our dandelion clones which were actually fairly successful! They sprouted leaves and there were most definitely roots growing from the mother plant’s root. The process of making slides for microscopes is fairy complicated, so we made a short video on how to make these slides for looking at mitosis, which was our ultimate goal in the root tips that we collected to examine under a microscope.

After we made the slides, we had several opportunities to find different stages of mitosis! Looking through the microscope at the mitosis allowed us to get a better look at it during its different phases.

Here are some of the curricular competencies that I’ll be outlining that Anika and I did well at:

Planning and conducting

  • Select and use appropriate equipment, including digital technologies, to systematically and accurately collect and record data
  • Transfer and apply learning to new situations

Anika and I successfully began cloning of our dahlia. Though we didn’t have enough time to see it sprout any leaves, we examined the root cutting and saw new tubers growing from the original root to signify that our cloning process was indeed working. We dissected it for mitosis photos, but found that we couldn’t squish it enough to get successful mitosis photos. However, with onion root tips, we managed to find mitosis.

Questioning and predicting

  • Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest
  • Make observations aimed at identifying their own questions, including increasingly complex ones, about the natural world

Our dandelion clones successfully cloned and some began to sprout leaves. We researched a lot to find what plant we could clone for the second stage in this unit, and we ended up with dahlia. We then made a sheet for how we were going to clone the dahlia, went out and purchased a dahlia and successfully cloned the dahlia.

Applying and innovating

  • Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches

Both Anika and I collaborated on this project to make it work. We both got the chance to clone one of our selected plants, and we worked well together to create a cloned dahlia.

Evaluating

  • Connect scientific explorations to careers in science
  • Consider social, ethical, and environmental implications of the findings from their own and others’ investigations

When we found stages of mitosis, as you can see in the photo above. We then took photos of them and put them together with diagrams depicting their similarities.

Now that this unit is finished, I can clone any flower or plant that I want in the future! I didn’t even know that cloning was possible before we began learning about it during this project. I’ve also learned about asexual and sexual reproduction down to the cells, which is very interesting in how complex such a tiny process can be. I am excited to utilize what I’ve learned from this unit in the future!