Before Year 8 make their own nail-varnish peels of a leaf's lower surface, the teacher shows them what they are looking for. A school tablet on a clamp stand sits over the eyepiece of the demonstration microscope, and its camera view is mirrored to the board at 400 times magnification. The class watches as the teacher moves across a peel from a privet leaf, stops on a pair of guard cells around an open stoma, focuses up and down, and then swaps to a peel from the upper surface of the same leaf, where there are far fewer stomata. Students sketch a stoma and its guard cells in their books from the board and write a sentence on why most stomata are on the underside, then make and examine their own peels at the class microscopes.
Tools: Built-in camera (slow motion and time-lapse) Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.