Growth and Development of Cells

ABPI interactive website

This is an alternative page from the extensive set of interactive resources developed by ABPI. On this page students consider Cell division, mitosis and cancer. There is a useful mitosis animation which can be played as on a full screen.

There is some additional information on the next pages of this resource on tumour formation. This gives a context for the process of mitosis and the control of the cell cycle, which is useful for students to be able to describe cancer as a result of changes that lead to uncontrolled growth and division.

You tube videos on cell division

As there are so many easily accessible videos and animations on YouTube for mitosis and meiosis, students could work in pairs to find the "best" video or animation.

The teacher could set the criteria for what determines the "best". Alternatively students could be given a number of videos/animations to evaluate against set criteria. Rather than students using valuable time to search for videos, it would be worth providing some for them to evaluate, such as this video which covers mitosis

SAPS root tip practical

This is a protocol for the observation of mitosis in stained root tips from Science & Plants for Schools (SAPS). The resource has been developed for A level Biology, but would work well as a teacher led demonstration for GCSE Biology students, with the results displayed on a whiteboard. 

Nuffield Foundation practicals on cell division

The Nuffield Foundation have collected and published a range of experiments to demonstrate biological concepts and processes, the two experiments suggested here provide the opportunity for students to observe the process of cell division by looking at dividing tissue. The two experiments are:

• Preparing an anther squash
• Investigating mitosis in alium root tip squash

For each experiment there are detailed teacher notes on lesson organisation, procedures and health and safety.