What lies beneath: digging Into the soil microbiome

Suitable for 14 to 19-year-olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK and the University of Minnesota in the US who have teamed up to understand how the microbes found in soil interact with one another and with plants, and whether this knowledge could be harnessed to bring benefits to agriculture.
• This resource also contains interviews with the researchers. If you or your students have a question for them, you can submit it it online – go to the article using the Futurum link below and scroll to the bottom of the page. The researchers will reply!
• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the research, and tasks them to think about the different stages of this project.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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