One would be surprised to find out that one-fifth of earth's organisms are fungi. Many of these fungi live right in our homes. Unlike plants fungi do not have specialized cells or tissues. They are usually a mass of many celled threadlike tubes.

Fungi can be very useful to other organism especially humans. Fungi is used in food, yeast and medicine such as penicillin. On forest floors it acts as as a recycler to many of earth's waste. It is also a natural pesticide used to fight unwanted organisms. Fungi, however, is not all good. It can cause disease and infection and sometimes may be the cause of an organisms death. Some fungal organisms are parasites, like ringworm and corn smut.

Fungi are diverse and have positive and negative interactions within our living world.

 

Corn smut is a fungus that is detrimental to corn plants.

Lesson 4

Objective: The students will be able to:

* describe the way fungi affect and interact with other living things.

Engage: To engage the students the teacher will display various fungi-yeast, a mushroom, a piece of tree bark with fungus growth and molded bread. Allow students to carefully observe each fungus. Ask students to look for similarities in each object ( do not point out the fungus) and record observations. Facilitate a discussion of the students observations. refer to the characteristics of the fungus kingdom they learned about.

Explore: Have students design an experiment to grow a fungus. The teacher will supply the students with a piece of fruit ( an apple or peach, etc.), water, a brown paper bag or covered shoe box ( to provide a dark environment) and a dissecting microscope. Allow students time to develop procedures, a hypothesis and time to implement their experiment and test their hypothesis. ----****The students should be able to observe a fungus growth over a period of a couple days.----****Once the fungi has grown use the dissecting microscope to observe how the fungus invades the cells f the fruit. Students can record results and share with the class.

Explain: The teacher will explain how fungus interacts with other organisms. Use the previous activity to reinforce how fungus grow and invades other organisms space (parasitic). the teacher will help the students understand that fungi can be good or bad and how much we as humans utilize fungus.

Elaborate: Distribute to each student a piece of molded bread. Have them examine the bread with a hand lens or a dissecting scope and record observations. Then have students make a wet mount slide of a piece of molded bread and observe the slide under low power on a microscope. Record observations.

** The students will observe the spores of the fungus interacting with the cells on the bread. Spores are reproductive cells. Remind students that fungi are living organisms.

 

fungal-algal interaction picture taken from http://gladstone.uoregon.edu

Evaluate: Have students write a newspaper article about "fungi". Use topics such as 1)A world without fungi. 2) The power of fungus. 3) Fungi - Good or Bad? Students are to include learned knowledge of fungi characteristics, the effect of fungi interactions with other organisms.