I love teaching ecology. It’s a great topic to start off the year because it’s fun with easy to understand concepts for students. For many years when I taught food webs, I would gloss over decomposers. They seemed boring, kinda gross, and hard for students to see. BUT! Luckily I saw the light and realized how important it was to talk about nature’s natural clean-up crew. Matter cycling plays a huge role in the health of an ecosystem. So, here is a break-down (…get it?) of decomposer lesson ideas:
Decomposition Lesson Ideas for Biology
1. Living in the dry desert means that my students and I don’t get to see mushrooms very often outside of the grocery aisle. I thought it would be fun to grow oyster mushrooms in the classroom with my students. I’ve done it multiple years now and every time students are amazed at how fast they grow. They are also editable!
You can purchase an oyster mushroom kit on Amazon (affiliate link). If you prefer to support a small business, I highly recommend Swampy Appleseed Mushrooms. The beautiful pink oyster mushrooms pictured are from him!
2. If you live somewhere that gets rain (unlike me), chances are you can easily find decomposers outside. If all your students have individual devices, take them outside on a scavenger hunt. Have them take a picture of a decomposer they find on your school campus and upload it to your LMS. (You can also have them find a producer and a consumer while they are at it!)
3. You might also find this decomposers lesson plan from Beetlesproject.org useful! Students search for decomposers, learn about the different types of decomposers, and create a diagram showing the process of decomposition.
4. Finding high quality online labs and activities is priceless. It allows students to get work done while you get a breather and can get caught up on grading or prepping for an upcoming lab. This FREE online investigation from the Natural History Museum of Utah teaches students about decomposition through games and interactives. You can read more about the 3 parts of the webquest here.
5. Crash course always does a great job of explaining concepts to students. Check out this Crash Course episode on Youtube called The Dirt on Decomposers.
6. Bioremediation is the use of microbes to clean up environmental pollutants. Decomposers are great at this! Check out this bioremediation lesson from Teach Engineering. In the activity students use yeast to clean up a “sugar spill.”
7. Keeping a vermicompost bin is easier than you think! Worms are the easiest class pet you will ever have, plus you can use the soil for other science experiments in your classroom. Head here for a full tutorial on how to set up and maintain a classroom compost bin.
Here is a cool time-lapse video of a pumpkin in a vermicompost bin you can show your students. It’s fun to watch!
8. Set up a “compost in a bag” experiment with various items. After sitting for a month, students return to the bags measure the change in mass, and discuss why some items decompose faster than others.
9. You might also be interested in joining the “soil your undies” challenge!
10. If you have older students, you might be comfortable having them learn about The Body Farm at University of Tennessee. This forensics lab studies the decomposition rates of bodies under different conditions, and has been a big asset to forensic investigators when determining the estimated time of death. You can find the article in my TpT store here.
I hope you can use some of those lessons! If you would like to get more teaching ideas for producers, consumers, and food webs, check out this blog post next.
Rock on,
