This series of reading passages and follow-up questions is meant to be used before or concurrent with teaching mitosis in a middle school or high school level biology course. This activity serves as an introductory activity to the process of the cell cycle, mitotic cell division, and the production of identical somatic cells. Vocabulary words including the cell cycle, somatic cells, diploid cells, binary fission, chromosomes, parent cells, daughter cells, centromere, sister chromatid, G1 phase,