Reflection for the lesson plan of Mitosis

Theme : Investigating the Cell as a Basic Unit of Living Things
Learning Area : Cell Division
Learning Objective : Understanding Mitosis

This lesson plan is designed to teach the students about mitosis in the learning area of cell division. During this 1 hour and 10 minutes class, students will be taught about the significance of mitosis, the phases in the cell cycle and the process of mitosis and cytokinesis. So at the of the lesson, students should be able to (1) list at least three significance of mitosis and give example by writing, (2) identify each phase in the cell cycle in the correct sequence, and (3) define the process of mitosis and cytokinesis by writing accurately.
In my view, this lesson is effectively encouraging students in critical and creative thinking. Critical thinking skills that involved in this teaching & learning process is making analogies; whereby the students had to design an 'Edible Mitosis' using the materials provided by the teacher. In this 'Edible Mitosis' activity, each group was given the plate pancake, red noodles, yellow noodles, pickled papaya, round fruity candy and the snake gummy. So using these materials, students had to design the phase of mitosis (each group designed one phase of mitosis only). After completing the activity, one of the group members explained the designed phase to the class. The creative thinking skills involved is comparing and contrasting. During the presentation of the edible mitosis, students noticed the similarities and differences of their phase with other groups. Teacher was there to elicit student’s ideas what were the similarities and differences. The teaching and learning strategy imposed to this activity is simulation in which the model (i.e. the phase of mitosis using the edible materials) is used to represent the objects or actual phase of mitosis so that students can visualize the phase of mitosis and thus understand the concepts of mitosis.
Another simulation strategy used by teacher in this lesson is role-play. In ‘Human Mitosis Model Activity’, students played out a particular role based on the mitosis process. For example, two female students acted as the sister chromatids of a maternal chromosome and two male students acted as the sister chromatids of a paternal chromosome. They would play their role as the mitosis process started. I think this activity can enhance student’s understanding about the concept of mitosis as they experienced the process through this role-play activity.