Extension Activities

There are many opportunities to extend and expand the activities listed in this module. Several examples are listed below. Extension 1 Soil Profile/Soil Card Lesson from NRCS: This simple lesson plan shows how to make soil cards from soil profiles. Extension 2 The Dirt on Soil from Discovery Education: Take a virtual microscopic safari through […]

Colonizing & Culturing Microbes

In this module, we will culture microbe colonies from our soil samples in order to determine what is living in our soil. In biology, a colony refers to several individual organisms of the same species living closely together, usually for mutual benefit. A bacterial colony (or colony of other microorganisms) is a cluster of organisms […]

Microbes & Biofilms

Microbes, although single-celled organisms, can form complex communities, sense other cells, and communicate with their own kind. They usually live as groups of similar organisms in biofilms. How do we visualize the microbial world? Using microscopes, of course! A great website to explore for yourselves (and to show your students mold growing on bread at […]

What is a Microbe?

Microbes are those organisms that are microscopic and include some of the eukayotes (protist, fungi, algae, and microscopic invertebrates) and all prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea). Viruses are also included in the microbes, but we are not going to cover these fascinating entities in this module. For more information on viruses, you can visit the Wikipedia […]