One major challenge in the bio classroom is that processes at the cellular level can be difficult for students to visualize. Visible Body Suite solves that problem with interactive 3D models that illustrate complex processes! This blog post will walk you through four activities that use VB Suite to teach mitosis and meiosis!
The activities we’ll discuss today assume that your students have a base knowledge of mitosis and meiosis.
When it comes to making lectures memorable, VB Suite’s got you covered. Not only are the annotatable 3D models and simulations great visual aids, but VB Suite’s Tours feature makes lectures more dynamic and interactive, and its bite-size animation videos deliver information quickly and efficiently. After students have the basics down, these activities will reinforce information.
We just talked about how VB Suite’s features make it a great lecturing aid—in this activity, we’re flipping the script and asking students to be the teachers.
Using Tours, students will work independently or in pairs to make a custom presentation that they will then use to “teach” their peers.
Assign half of the class to present on mitosis and assign meiosis to the other half. When creating their lectures, ask students to do the following:
When their Tours are complete, have mitosis students present to meiosis students and vice versa.
When both teaching sessions are over, have students work together to come up with a list of differences between the two processes. Classes who require more guidance can use this set of questions to get started on reflection:
Tours can be shared with a few clicks, so it’s easy for students to turn in their work.
In this activity, students make their own Flashcard Decks with prompts designed to stump their peers. Through this, you will ask students to think about the challenging aspects of learning mitosis and meiosis.
To create a Flashcard, users adjust the model until it’s just right, then add labels, text, and drawings to the front and back of the Flashcard. Flashcards can then be added to a Deck.
By designing their own Flashcards, students will think critically about the steps of meiosis and mitosis and the differences between the two processes.
Flashcard Decks are also shareable, so students can turn in their links at the end of the day. You can then pick out the best Flashcards and put together a Flashcard Deck of highlights to quiz the class with the next day as a warmup!
This activity is inspired by traditional classroom “cut and paste” activities and the sketch notes that Dr. Cindy Harley uses with her anatomy and physiology students. In this activity, students make a visual map of the stages of mitosis and meiosis, respectively.
Students will use VB Suite models as a foundation for their own visual representations of mitosis and meiosis. Instead of sketching out the processes of mitosis and meiosis, ask students to position and pause the models and click “Download image” to save an image file to their computer.
Students can either print out their images and use glue, paper, and markers to create their own concept maps, or they can use the draw tool in VB Suite alongside an online tool like Canva to create a digital map. The process of creating the map will reinforce what students have learned, and by the end, they will also have a study tool!
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