Didactic Guide for Teachers

This activity is directed to secondary school 14-18 years old students. As you can see, the site is directed to students, so you can propose them directly the web adress to undertake the activity. This is one of the reasons why correct answers are not provided (further explanation in IBSE).

Download Ressources and Guides

All the proposed materials (including the Mitosis analysis) are printable and downloadable in editable .odt Format. A Student's Guide is included.

Download Folder: https://app.box.com/s/zv36lyc11y4juevgfp9niee6qcch267z

Versions created by other teachers

(If you develop a new version, you are invited to share it with me and other teachers, I'll include and link your version in the list).

Didactic Frame and Teacher's Guides

This activity is part of the educational C3 Project (Creation of Scientific knowledge) and the Syllabus ABP/IBSE Itinerary ProyectandoBioGeo. Comments and suggestions are welcome. If you add or modify steps from this didactic sequence, please, let me know, your work can be useful for other teachers and students. If you want, I could eventually add your activities as a contribution in this website, toghether with your name and contact details.

A description and discussion on the application of the activity is available in a published article in Spanish:

Didactic Goals

The didactic sequence dealing mitosis, cancer and creation of scientific knowledge, this activity pretends students to:

  • Understand scientific knowledge as a knowledge permanently under construction.

  • Compare differences and similarities between the different stages of mitosis and correlate it with the mitosis process.

  • Communicate scientific data in scientific formats.

  • Analyze and create data in different formats (microscope images, graphics, numeric,...) and take decisions and design experiments from it.

  • Apply mitosis and cancer scientific models to interprete real data.

Indications to apply the activity

  • Don't explain anything to your students. They will be able to learn it alone. Just let them work, and observe their discussions. You'll have the opportunity to collect the explanations after and from their work.

  • Let them talk between them, even between the different teams. Science is a social process. Scientists don't call it copying or cheating. They call it constructing knowledge, and it usually happens in congresses and seminars.

  • Ask your students to think. Explain them you expect their best.

  • Regarding the Additional Step B: find here instructions to prepare the samples.

Calendar and Class Organization

    • Step 1: One session. Students can finish it as homework. Individual work. Organization of the classroom. Individual activity. Students should seat separated one from another. Distribute among them one of the Patient Files, or make them to download it from the activity website. Each student should have only one document and shouldn't know anything about the information from other students. They shouldn't choose the document. It's no problem if two students are analizing the same document in parallel in case that you have more than 20 students. Each document is identified by an ID number, you will easily identify that only the last digit is informative.

    • Step 2, Step 3: One session. Is is important not to explicit which are the factors of these experiments. In this step, students are asked indirectly, to identify which are the changing factors, and discover that we can extract conclusions only when there is only one different factor (dose, drug, period). Before the end of the step 3, each team have to present their article and decide which is the Jorunal they want to publish in.

    • Step 4:One session. There are not instructions about if students can go to the same Editorial Board they have sent the article in. It is a good experience that them arrive, by themselves, to decide that one cannot evaluate his own work.

    • Additional steps: There are some concerns regarding the additional step B that should be only accessible to teachers. These indications are included in the following document "StepBconcerns" (will be soon uploaded).This document is only available for users logged on with their "Xtec " account from the Department of Education of the Catalan Governement. If you are a teacher and you want access to it, contact me from your institutional mail adress, as I can confirm that you are a teacher.

About IBSE (Inquiry-Based Science Education)

Some of the principles of IBSE used to build this site and didactic activity:

  • Scientists generate scientific theories based on evidence, but they do not find definitive answers. Real science has not a book of "correct answers" were you can contrast if your conclusions are correct. "Correct processes" and "Best explanations" is the most you can get in real science. It's why answers have been supressed from all the documents given here.

  • Scientific knowledge and ideas change over time and are open to further revision as our understanding of the world around us evolves. Education doesn't mean to transmit a false feeling of certainty. Education means to teach how to deal with uncertainty, to take decisions and assume risks. Don't confirm them if they have the correct answer or not. In case of misunderstandings, just ask them if their process is correct and their results coherent. Answer with questions to their questions, or help them to make better questions. "Correct solutions" or "Wise teachers" won't be present in their life for ever. Teach them how to arrange without it.

    • Science is a social and creative activity. Constructing and testing hypothesis, interpreting data from different formats and adjusting an abstract model as a consequence, identifying patterns and stablishing relationships, discussing results and justifying conclusions, are key competences that science learning must include as a priority, not only to make them best scientists, but to make them critical citizens.

Examples of students' productions

CLIL/Aicle

This site has been built from a didactic activity performed with spanish students, and in some steps, liguistic clues are given. I'm yet working on this aspect.

Hints and Ideas for further development

The Additional tasks section contains other activities that can be proposed or choosen by the students. If you develop new activities from this didactic sequence I'll be glad if you share it with me, I could eventually offer it in this site with the same License as the rest of the materials.