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The
one place on Earth it’s almost impossible to find fungi is in the UK
National Curriculum for schools.
This website is devoted to
compensating for this deficiency by providing resources for
use within the current NC that address NC topics and also give
proper representation to fungi. Specially-produced and
ready-to-use lessons and classroom activities, teacher’s
guides and pupil class sheets, are among the many resources
available for free download from this website. Basically, all you have to do is select the resource you
want to use, download it and use it. When you download a
file, you can save it to your own local disk, or print it, or
edit it immediately. It's up to you. You can use these any way you
like for your teaching. Remember that PDF files should preserve our
formatting, but the formatting of other file types depends on the fonts and settings of your
machine.
You need Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® for the PDF files
Many of the downloadable documents on this site are in the
form of Adobe® Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Use
THIS LINK to
get your free copy of Adobe® Acrobat® Reader®. This FREE software lets you view
and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files on all major computer
platforms. Remember you can also SAVE the PDF to your own local disk, AND you can also search the document for particular words or phrases
(use the “Find” function on the Acrobat Reader “File” menu).
You also
need to be able to edit Microsoft Office files
We also offer many documents in forms that you can edit
yourself - especially in MSWord.doc and PowerPoint.ppt
formats. These were prepared originally using
Microsoft Office 2003. Other software that will open and
edit these files includes
Sun Microsystem's Star Office and the
free
OpenOffice.
Finally,
you will need a graphics program
In response to many requests we've added a lot of images to
this site, so you will need a graphics program to make use of
them. Most are downloadable as JPG (= JPEG) files so just
about any program will be able to use them. We use
Adobe Photoshop,
Microsoft Digital Image, and
Roxio PhotoSuite. Picasa is a
free image manipulation program, which has received
good reviews, that you can
download from Google.
© Copyright statement -
copy freely for the classroom
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Guided Tour of the CD website
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Beginners section |
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This section contains articles explaining the jargon and
other introductory topics, most of which were originally
published in the BMS magazines Mycologist and Field
Mycology. They are provided on the website as PDF-files,
so that the user can download them immediately:
explaining the jargon; first steps in the classroom;
venturing into field study; mushroom or toadstool? More
serious field work; organized help with field study. |
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Answers to your most frequently-asked questions |
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A series of articles called ‘Mycology answers’ in the
Mycologist between 1993 and 1999 dealt with a wide range
of common questions about fungi. 27 articles, covering
topics like: Why does jam go mouldy …? How are soya
beans fermented? Why does “athlete’s foot” itch? What
are mycotoxins? How are beer and lager produced? |
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Teaching Resources for Key Stages 2-3 |
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This page offers access to activities, games, and
stories for 7 to 11-year olds. It starts with all the
resources and advice needed for a whole day of games and
activities for this age group. Includes the storybook
Fungus Fred goes Foraying page by page, online,
while another page by page offering is the 'explainers’
guide to fungi' How the Mushroom Got its Spots,
which is aimed at anyone who wants to tell children, or
non-experts of any age, more about the fascinating world
of mushrooms, toadstools, moulds and other fungi. We
also have a detailed guide to the information you need
to enjoy a school trip safely. Download
PDF file or
MSWord.doc by clicking the hyperlinks. |
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Teaching Resources for Key Stage 4 |
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This web page links to an extensive
range of specially-written classroom-ready resources
(teacher's guides, class sheets, quizzes, games), which
have been well received by pupils in classroom trials.
Class sheets deal with cells and cell biology; there's a
series of five ready-made lessons covering
Welcome to the World of Fungi, Reproduction and
Conservation, Favourite or Nastiest Fungus, Fungi and
Industry and Fungi and Disease; and a workshop
‘What’s your favourite fungus?’ comprising information,
games and other exercises. |
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The Funky Fungi
Workshop |
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This page offers all you need for a
workshop/demonstration/training exercise for GCSE pupils
to promote awareness and understanding of fungi.
Developed as National Science Week sessions all the
resources required are freely available here. |
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Post-16 Resources |
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Explore a range of biological features at
‘close-to-research’ level with materials accessible
here. The intention is to provide teachers and pupils
with ideas and starter references (in the form of ‘get
it now’ reprints as free to download, free to print, and
free to copy PDF files) for investigations that could
become AS or A2 level projects on exploring genomes and
genomics, medical and health topics, toxins; fungi as
food; fungal growth, kinetics and mechanics;
biotechnology; fungi in the environment; soil, minerals,
mycorrhizas, alien fungi, and geomycology. |
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Complete courses on drawing and painting, and
photographing fungi |
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This web page offers PDF reprints of articles by a
professional artist making up an eight-part course on
sketching and painting fungi, as well as an eight-part
master class in fungal photography by a wildlife
photographer. Other useful articles tell you, for
example, how to use a flat bed scanner to take
photographic images, and there is also a
webpage with advice about choosing a microscope;
setting up the microscope; and preparing specimens. |
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Galleries of free-to-download Display Posters and
Graphics files |
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Access several galleries of posters and images. Display
posters are both text-based and pictorial. Most are
offered as PDF files (these should preserve our
formatting for you to print), and as PowerPoint files so
you can use them for projection or edit for your own
purposes. The image galleries include cover pictures
from the Society’s fungus magazines and many digital
photo images you can download as high resolution JPEG
graphic files suitable for image manipulation or
poster-making projects. |
| To SEARCH
this CD
CLICK
HERE |
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See who
approves and links to us |
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Read publications
related to fungi4schools website |
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What about
visitors from outside the UK? |
We've been checked out and
found useful
This site is linked in the 'useful sites' section of the
DfES website
TeacherNet, and has been approved for the Curriculum Online repository being
developed by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta).
A hyperlink has also been placed in the 'websites of interest' section of the
National Science Learning Centre's website.
SETNET (Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics
Network) has placed a link to Fungi4Schools on their website [look in Links:
Schemes and Resources of
www.setnet.org.uk].
CLEAPSS (Consortium of Local Education Authorities for
the Provision of Science Services) has put hyperlinks to fungi4schools on the
primary and secondary links pages of their website [see
www.cleapss.org.uk/linkspri.htm and /linkssec.htm].
The Biosciences Federation has placed a link to
fungi4schools in the 'Education and Careers - useful links' section of its
website.
Return
to Guided Tour
Publications relating to
fungi4schools
Moore D, Fryer K, Quinn C, Roberts S, Townley R, 2005. How much are your
children taught about fungi in school? Mycologist 19: 152-158. [DOWNLOAD]
Moore D, Roberts S, Quinn C, Townley R, Fryer K, 2006. Mushroom surprise. More
than a mushroom: the low-down on fungi for all key stages. Times Educational
Supplement (ASE Science Special) published 6 January 2006. [DOWNLOAD]
Moore D, Roberts S, Quinn C, Townley R, Fryer K, 2006. Now, where did we lose
Kingdom Fungi...? Teaching Ecology Newsletter, issue 32: 11-13.
Moore D, Pöder R, Molitoris H-P, Money NP, Figlas D, Lebel T, 2006. Crisis in
teaching future generations about fungi. Mycological Research 110:
626-627. [DOWNLOAD]
Moore D, Pöder R, 2006. Are your children taught anything about fungi at school?
Sydowia 58 1-2. [DOWNLOAD]
Moore D, 2006. A day in the life ... of a mycologist. School Science Review
88 (322) 9-10. [DOWNLOAD]
Moore D, 2006. Fungi 4 Schools - The Website. School Science Review (in
press)
Moore D, 2006. fungi4schools - the new BMS education website. Mycologist
(in press) [DOWNLOAD]
Moore D, Moore E, 2006. Borne in the wagon of a travelling show: the BMS
Roadshow rides on. Mycologist
(in press) [DOWNLOAD]
Return to Guided Tour
And what about visitors to
this website from outside the UK?
We don’t think that the UK is the only country where statutory school
biology is limited to animals, plants and bacteria. Is the UK is the only country where the majority of
16 year-olds think that fungi are bacteria? Perhaps visitors to this site from outside the UK would like to take a serious look
at the school curricula in their own countries and report back? Do the school
curricula call for comparisons only between animals and plants? Do they offer
details about animal and plant cells only? Do they only ever mention fungi (and
always linked with bacteria) as ‘degraders’? These are the symptoms of the
disease afflicting the UK National Curriculum. Recognise them? Then tell us
about it - just e-mail the
webmaster.
Return to Guided Tour
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