This animated video introduces students to the benefits of fungi in the soil and how it plays an important role in combating climate change.
Using animations and visuals, the narrator explains how plants capture carbon and transfer it into the soil, where fungi plays an important role in storing it for very long periods of time.
Using graphs, data, and mathematical calculations, the video explains how fungi in the soil can be a very effective tool in the fight against climate change.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video is a great introduction to explaining the carbon cycle and the important role of fungi in the carbon cycle.
The chalkboard math problems can be used to incorporate math skills into this lesson.
Additional Prerequisites
While not required, it would be helpful if students already had a basic understanding of the carbon cycle before watching.
The video shows a graph with data collected from ice cores. This resource could be used to provide some context for this section.
Differentiation
Students in biology classes can watch this video as part of a lesson on the carbon cycle, cellular respiration, photosynthesis, decomposition, and food webs.
This resource could be used along with this video about how trees use fungi to communicate with each other and send nutrients to their offspring. This could incorporate SEL and ethics, as trees and other organisms are capable of protecting themselves, their family members, and communicate with each other.
Students could investigate the soil at their school or near their home as an extension activity and discuss how pesticides impact the ability of fungi and other organisms to live in the soil.
Similar resources include this video about regenerative farming practices, this video about the cycling of matter in ecosystems, and this module about soil and the carbon cycle.
Scientist Notes
The resource introduces biogeochemical processes within the soil-earth-atmospheric system. This is insightful and recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
MS-LS1-7 Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-3 Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem.
HS-LS2-5 Develop a model to illustrate the role of photosynthesis and cellular respiration in the cycling of carbon among the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere.
