We made clones. Yeah we made clones. Not human ones, obviously. That would be unethical. This whole project was based on us learning about asexual and non asexual reproduction. For example we studied mitosis (click here to learn more about mitosis) and meiosis (click here to learn more about meiosis). We studied how animals reproduce and how bacteria and plants reproduce. The final project was to grow our own clones from a plant we taken tissue samples from.
- Select and use appropriate equipment, including digital technologies, to systematically and accurately collect and record data
The first step of this project was to make clones from dandelion’s outside of our school. We then let those clones grow after we planted them, and then we took a part of the root and learned how to make a slide, for a microscope, which meant we had to learn the correct procedure for doing so. I think I improved on this curricular competency, because I hadn’t done that many science labs in class, so this is a good opportunity to learn how to do something that could come in handy in the future. It as the best way to observe and collect data on the topic we were studying.
We even had to make an animation to show our understanding of how to make the slides. Below you can see the procedure we had to follow to make the slides.
2. Ensure that safety and ethical guidelines are followed in their investigations
I demonstrated this curricular competency during this unit, and here’s why. When we were creating the microscope slides as I mentioned in the paragraph above, what we had to make them ourselves, which meant that we had to use chemicals which were hazardous. Like the acid we used to kill the tissue samples from the plant that we cloned so that we could put it under a microscope slide.
That would be the safety guidelines portion of our project. The ethical guidelines wouldn’t talk about as much but it was still mentioned, like why it is unethical to clone humans and animals. If you’re wondering why that’s unethical, you can watch the video below.
3. Use knowledge of scientific concepts to draw conclusions that are consistent with evidence
I applied this curricular competency when we were analyzing our slides. The goal of creating our slides, the ones containing tissue samples from a dandelion and other plant clones, was for us to be able to observe mitosis in action. We did this by finding each different stage of mitosis in our samples, and taking photos. But to do that we first had to study mitosis and meiosis. And we had to use that learning as evidence to back up our claims.
4. Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest
The fourth and final curricular competency that I chose was one I think I got to work on a lot in this unit. If you’d asked me one month ago how you clone something I probably would’ve shrugged and said “I dunno?”. I had very limited knowledge on asexual reproduction, cloning and mitosis in general. Because I was interested in learning how cloning worked because it something that’s pretty cool, I did better in this project than I would have other wise.
Well that it for today! I hope you enjoyed reading this post and I’ll see you next time.