Teaching Fungi? Interactive Notebook Pages and Warm Ups Will Help!

What have I learned about interactive notebooks, warm ups and bell ringers during my first year of using them?

• Time management is so important!  If you are not careful, this can consume way too much of your class time.
• Utilize to the best of your ability, the first 5-10 minutes of your class.  Don't get bogged down in classroom chores.  Get your students right to work every single day.  A short warm up or bell ringer each day will get students working, while you are taking care of "stuff."
• Reviewing a small amount of information each day has increased retention of information for my students.
• The best comment ever from a student?  "These have really helped me remember the information for the test."

I began this journey at the beginning of this school year, and I can honestly say that I wish I had started this years ago.  Each year our class time seems to get shorter, and we have more information we are required to cover.  It seems to me that each year brings more and more interruptions to my class time.  

My goal at the beginning of the school year?  I wanted to find a way to better utilize each valuable minute of instruction time.  These activities (interactive notebooks and bell ringers) have accomplished that for me.  And added bonuses include:  (1) My students actually seem to enjoy them!  (2) The pages make great homework assignments.  (3) I can leave them in my sub folder for emergencies.  (4) The completed warm up notebook provides a perfect way to review for my semester exam.

Note:  This is just the latest in a long line of blog posts on this topic.  Use the search bar at the top of my blog to search for the other posts about interactive notebooks.

OK, so I need to get the topic of this particular blog post.  I have just finished using this technique to cover my unit on the Fungi.

I developed a set of 16 bell ringer pages to use with my unit.  Some of the pages were used at the beginning of my class as bell ringers, while other pages were used for homework assignments.  But all pages went into the warm up notebook that I require each student to keep.  Here are the highlights:

I have uploaded this set of interactive notebook pages on the fungi into my TpT Store.  

All of my interactive notebook sets can be view by clicking this image.

What's next? We are studying the protists now in my class.  I am am building a set of bell ringers to cover the algae and the protozoans.

Byer's Lake: Our 7- Mile Hike in Alaska

Byers Lake Nature Hike

Talkeetna Area, Alaska

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Alaska.... a trip that has been a dream of mine for many years.  I have been writing about some of my experiences there. If you have missed the first few posts, you can read about the Fairbanks area and Denali National Park by clicking these links.

Byers Lake is a small lake located in Denali State Park.  "Small lake" is a relative term.  Everything in Alaska is HUGE, so I guess this qualifies as a small lake.  The lake is 1.23 miles in length and .6 miles in width, and has a shore length of 4 miles.  Our hike was not limited to the immediate circumference of the lake.  We trekked through the woods quite a bit, extending the length of the hike.  According to the Wikipedia, the maximum depth of the lake is 160 feet.  As you can see in the above photo, the lake was still partially covered in ice during the first week of June.

I would like to dedicate this post to our trail guide, MacKenzie.  MacKenzie is a college grad spending the summer in Alaska before continuing on with graduate school this fall. Mackenzie was fantastic!!  (Thank you so much, MacKenzie for an awesome outing!!) She is knowledgable, fun, has a great personality, and in short, she made the hike a most enjoyable day.  I was very much impressed with her ability to identify just about anything that I spotted in the woods.  As you will soon see as you continue to read this post, MacKenzie has a thing for fungi, especially the bracket fungi!

Bracket fungi, or shelf fungi, are types of fungi that belong to the phylum Basidiomycota.  They typically have fruiting bodies called "conks" that are grouped together in interconnecting rows.  MacKenzie can spot a conk a mile away...and she had interesting information on each and every different species we saw!

This is called chaga.  It is a parasite on birch trees, and is, oddly enough, a sterile conk.  It is not the fruiting body, but rather, a mass of mycelium.  It is black due to large amounts of melanin.  Apparently chaga can be brewed into a tea for medicinal purposes.

This is called the Tinder Conk fungus.  A well known use of tinder conk is its use as tinder in making a fire.

Beware this Devil's Club!  It is covered in brittle spines. The plant can grow 3 - 5 feet tall.  The spines easily break off and are painful in the hand!!







As expected, the lichens were gorgeous and plentiful.  Air quality around Byers Lake must be exceptional if judged by the proliferation of lichens.

Fairy Horn Lichen

Fairy Puke

Leaf Lichen

Old Man's Beard

This is False HelleBore.  It is a beautiful plant, but it is extremely toxic!!  If eaten, symptom's begin with nausea and vomiting.  If untreated, toxins will slow respiratory and cardiac function, leading to death.

This, however, is wild cucumber, and is delicious!!

A big highlight of the hike was a visit to a waterfall!

As we progressed around the lake, i did not think that the scenery could get any better....but it did.  These are two of my favorite photos.

The reflection in the water....priceless!

A rare view of Mt. McKinley.

It was a fabulous day!  The only thing missing??  I wanted to see a bear!!  I did see a really cool bear track, though.....  Better luck next time.

Enjoying Nature!

We had a gorgeous Saturday in my neck of the woods.  It was sunny and 70 degrees.  I spent the day doing a cemetery clean up project with a local ladies group.  My high school aged daughter joined us, and I enjoyed spending the lovely day out of doors with my daughter and friends.  We raked up many months worth of magnolia leaves from our local historical cemetery.

As we raked, I discovered a very pretty patch of bracket fungi....

The bracket fungi are also called shelf fungi.  They belong to the phylum Basidiomycetes, along with the mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, jelly fungi, smuts and rusts.  Shown in the photos are the fruiting bodies.  They are generally tough and sturdy and produce their spores within pores of the fruiting body.  Most shelf fungi, like many of the fungi, are decomposers, and can easily be found growing on dead trees and other dead plant matter. Other shelf fungi are parasitic, and grow along the sides of living trees.

Also spotted were some lovely lichens growing on the sides of some very old trees.  Lichens are composite organisms.  Two species live together in a lichen in mutualistic harmony.  One of the organisms is a photosynthetic alga, and the other is a species of fungus.  The alga carries out photosynthesis and provides the fungus with food.  The fungus has the ability to absorb water, and provides the algae with an adequate water supply.

Lichens can be found in nearly every habitat on earth.  They are particularly susceptible to environmental changes and are often an indicator of air pollution in an area.  If the lichens are not thriving, there is sure to be a reason.  Lichens are also used to make dyes and perfumes.

Lichens: Informational Text, Critical Reading, and Lab Activity

Don't Forget the Fungi!

My favorite biology joke:  What did the pepperoni say to the mushroom on the pizza?


Answer:  You're a Fun-Guy!  

My unit on the fungi is one of my favorite units to teach.  Most of the students in my biology class have never had any instruction about the Kingdom Fungi before they reach my class.  They are amazed to learn that outside of the animal kingdom, the fungi are our closest relatives!  The fungi have some amazing characteristics!  We depend on them as decomposers.  Life might cease to exist on Earth if it were not for the fungi breaking down and decomposing dead organisms and returning the chemical elements they possess to the ecosystem to be used in new organisms.

Click picture.

Simply put, there is more to the fungi than just that green mold that invades our pantries and refrigerators!  I have just posted my new "Fungi PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student" to my TpT store.  This product is a 56 slide PowerPoint on the Fungi.  It is accompanied by a set of notes for the teacher, and a notes outline for the student.  Students will fill in their outline as the lesson is being presented.

Topics covered are:

1.   What are the fungi?

2.   Characteristics of fungi.

3.   Fungi are heterotrophs.

4.   Methods of food getting in the fungi.

5.   What environment do they prefer?

6.   The structure of fungi:  hyphae, mycelium, fruiting bodies, spores, rhizoids, stolons.

7.   Label the structures of a typical bread mold.

8.   Reproduction in fungi:  fragmentation, budding, spores production, asexual, and sexual reproduction.

9.   Kinds of fungi:  The four phyla are named and examples given for each phylum.

10.  Life cycle of the common bread mold.

11.  Phylum Zygomycota

12.  Phylum Ascomycota

13.  Phylum Basidiomycota

14.  Phylum Deuteromycota

15.  The Ecology of the Fungi: saprophytes, parasites, decomposition.

16.  Symbiotic relationships of fungi:  mutualism, commensalism, parasitism.

17.  Lichens and Mycorrhizae

I am also just about finished with a new FREE product on this topic, so stayed tuned for that.  I will add it to the list of freebies at the top left of my blog as soon as possible.

Happy Teaching!