The NGSS standard 5-LS2-1 leads toward the core ideas of interdependent relationships in an ecosystem and how matter and energy cycle in ecosystems.
When developing this phenomena-based unit, decomposers like fungi play a huge role! Our lessons within this unit will help you anchor student learning about decomposers’ role in the movement of matter in an ecosystem.
Rather than learning facts about fungi, students figure out why some fungi live in animal wastes.
We’ll show you how we teach this unit!
🍄 Engage
ENGAGE: We introduce the idea with a video that shows fungi within the waste and how they use waste for their survival to get students thinking about our question of why do some fungi love poop. We set up our C-E-R chart with our claim.
Throughout this 9-day unit, students investigate the relationship between fungi, animal wastes, soil, plants, and the atmosphere.
🍄 Explore
EXPLORE: Students begin performing a mushroom dissection to start observing all the details of the structures mushrooms have to survive.
They have the chance to draw a diagram within their notebooks. Students can even use a microscope to look even closer at the gills.
Common mushrooms from the grocery store work great and are safe for students to use!
🍄 Explain
EXPLAIN: Students read a text about fungi and watch a video clip from our friend at Mad Garden Science. As a class, we add evidence from those sources to our C-E-R chart.
🍄 Elaborate
ELABORATE: As a class, you generate a list of matter, where it comes from, and where it goes among soil, animal waste, plants, mushrooms, and the atmosphere. Teams then draw or use digital tools to create a model and get a glimpse of others’ work to make additions or corrections to their models.
🍄 Evaluate
EVALUATE: We revisit our C-E-R, synthesize the information, and construct our reasoning.
🍄 Extend
Extend: Students get to participate in an observational investigation by planting three mushrooms in various environments to see how the mushrooms thrive after several days or longer.
🍄 Quiz
Quiz: The unit concludes with a 10-question multiple choice quiz and Short Constructed Response.
Fungi growth in animal wastes is a remarkable phenomenon to engage students with the movement of matter within our environments!
If you’re interested in this unit with all the printables, directions, sample CER, and examples, it is available on TpT. Fungi Phenomena-Based Unit
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