A workshop, training exercise or demonstration for GCSE pupils to promote awareness and understanding of fungi

This page outlines a set of activities that have been offered to parties of school children (numbering from 15 to 40) in years 8-10 during National Science Week 2005 and 2006 and at similar events in the local museum and colleges. Feedback has been extremely positive, and that applies both to feedback from pupils of all ages, their teachers and the helpers (some comments are shown alongside). We were aware during the events that they were being well received by the audience, and subsequent contacts suggested that the primary objectives were being met because much greater awareness (and much more sympathetic awareness) of fungi and their contribution to daily life was being shown after the events by children and adults alike.

Facilities required

We’ve generally dealt with school parties numbering from 15 to 40 and have used both seminar rooms and laboratories. The final activity is a card game, so this governs the layout of the room – it’s useful to have the audience arranged around tables or benches of 4 to 5 pupils.

Documentation

All of the documentation required for the workshop, and that includes teacher guidance notes and pupil class-sheets, can be downloaded from this website using the hyperlinks in the Table below.

Other materials

Demonstration materials can be bought from supermarkets using the items illustrated in the Supermarket Challenge (FF25) poster as your shopping list. It is often easy to obtain a range of cultivated mushrooms (button and closed cup mushrooms to compare with open flats or ‘Portabellos’, chestnuts to compare with whites). Most supermarkets can usually illustrate biodiversity even further with oyster and shiitake mushrooms, and there is increasing availability of so-called ‘exotic’ mushrooms, so it is usually possible to provide the class with five or six different edible mushrooms. Don’t ignore dried mushrooms; again most supermarkets stock dried porcini, wild forest mushrooms, cloud ears, and often several more. All can contribute to discussion of fungal biodiversity.

A good supply of cheeses are well received by pupils (particularly if they are given the opportunity to sample them) and a selection of blue cheeses, brie and camembert can enliven the demonstration and contribute to discussion of the involvement of fungi in production of a major food resource. The explanatory descriptions that accompany the Supermarket Challenge poster include a number of anecdotes about the importance of fungi in developing the flavour of chocolate, in making fizzy drinks, soy sauce, Marmite, Quorn products alongside the obvious bread and alcoholic beverages. All of these can be used to make very interesting points that are relevant to the pupils.

Dissection of the mushrooms can be done quite successfully with disposable picnic ware (plastic knives and forks, paper plates and napkins) from the supermarket. And don’t forget a supply of refuse sacks for the clean-up.

Helpers

It’s also useful to have enough helpers for one helper to ‘adopt’ each table and act a guide or provocateur as appropriate. Helpers can be recruited from amongst older pupils, so that helping in the sessions contributes to the helpers’ own education. In the university/college environment we use undergraduate and postgraduate helpers, many of whom are engaged on educational projects to which the workshop experience contributes. It is very satisfying to observe undergraduate student abilities develop towards accomplished and polished performances as teachers in the Science Week sessions in mid-March.

Flexibility

The programme described above is that developed for a two-hour session but it can be adapted to suit a variety of circumstances and timetable slots. Indeed, there is such a range of resources available on the fungi4schools website that it is possible to modify the materials and content to suit a variety of curricula purposes. We would also emphasise the value of maintaining flexibility in each session, modifying each to satisfy their audiences. In addition, in the university context, it is worth mentioning the unqualified success of incorporating the sessions into undergraduate project assignments is greatly encouraging and amplifies the educational value of the project by expanding its coverage from school year 7 through to undergraduate year 3.

Copy freely for the classroom

Classroom materials may be copied freely for educational purposes only. All rights reserved for commercial use © British Mycological Society 2006

National Science Week sessions sponsored by:

© British Mycological Society 2006

This webpage © David Moore 2016

Updated December 2016

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