I was asked to a Moss Safari for a local secondary school as part of their STEM week. The students who participated were from Years 8 & 9 (12-14 year olds) and they were assigned to attend the sessions, rather than chose to. It’s important to me to have an impact on young people’s appreciation of the world around them, understanding of science and to know there’s a space for them in science if they should wish to pursue it. Here’s what we did, what we learnt and what I would do differently next time.
I visited Durrington High School in Worthing on Wednesday 23rd March 2022 for a morning of four 50 minute sessions (a total of 81 students attended across the four sessions).
What we did
We started with a 10 minute introduction, which I recorded onto a PowerPoint (downloadable – see Resources below) to introduce moss as a habitat, the Big Five and the concept of adaptations.
The Moss Safari. I then did a love Moss Safari from through my own microscope. I was able to narrate as we saw different organisms.
There was then 15 minutes for the students to use their school microscopes to look for their own Big Five. Along with their class teacher, I went around to help students to set up, focus and identify wheat they had found. I explained what they had to do, shared the risk assessment and gave them an instruction sheet (Figure 1).
Note that ahead of my visit, I popped into the science department and met the organising teacher, the technicians and saw the lab I would be working in. This helped me visualise how I would do the session and check that my laptop would work through the projector and screen.
In addition, I decided to make a bulk amount of moss squeeze ahead of the visit, decanting it into small bottles for each pair of students. This meant that students didn’t have to get too messy doing the actual moss squeeze and increased the time doing the actual observing.
What we learnt
I was able to gauge what students knew through their responses to my questions, reactions to seeing and doing Moss Safari and their questions during the session. I also asked them to complete a short feedback sheet at the end of the session to ascertain their views on the session.
Not all teenagers are interested in moss, microscopes or micro-organisms, however the vast majority did take at least a polite interest and others were totally blown away about it.
Three particular situations stood out for me:
One girl was particularly concerned that these organisms were in her drinking water. She was quite repulsed by this idea. I had already explained that we do a moss squeeze using rain water or mineral, not tap water. We were able to explore that tap water is very clean, but even if we did drink water with these organisms in it, it would do us no harm.
Due to Covid restrictions over the past two years, some students had not yet had the opportunity to use a microscope in secondary school. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it is a stark reminder that these experiences are ‘rites of passage’ that every child should experience at least once. What could be the knock on effect of that on our STEM uptake?
When students find an organism on their slide, they take great pride in it. I had one boy that found a stationary tardigrade amongst a lot of debris. It was a great spot for him and he seemed very chuffed. One pair of girls found the only mite of the day, again they were keen to photograph it and show their classmates. Ownership in the Moss Safari is far greater, it seems, when students get to have a go at it themselves.
Feedback
I prepared a very short feedback form with the view to to capture what the students thought of the session and whether it made them think about science differently or change their aspirations.
Note that during the session I emphasise that we (scientists) are still learning about these organisms and habitats, how learning about these organisms helps us (scientists) improve human lives through medicine and technology and just by understanding some of the organisms in the moss from our roof has greater implications for global ecology. Examples I gave was that someone had recently completed a doctorate in the diatom ecology on manatee skin, another is that nematodes have won (indirectly) several Nobel Prizes for science and that we recently thawed out a rotifer in Siberia that had been frozen for 24,000 years and yet it seems its cells had not aged!
So what did the students think?
I summarise the results in Table 1 and discuss them here, along with the written comments some students provided. I was disappointed that only 78% students felt they had enjoyed the session, but on reflection, they were a captive audience and it isn’t for everyone. A similar number found it interesting, but about 95% did feel they learnt something new, which can’t be a bad thing!
My favourite comments from students regarding their enjoyment, interest and learning were:
- There’s a whole world just in a tiny bit of moss
- I learnt that all the rotifers are female and that moss is very interesting
- Rotifers are transparent. You can see the mouths of some of them. Tardigrades are cute.
- Lots of microscopic creatures curl up and become more resilient.
- Nematodes are common, a lot of them are transparent, tardigrades are hard to kill when in a state
With regard to aspirations in STEM, even though the scores were lower, I was more encouraged by these. If Moss Safari can get get just a handful of students to consider becoming a scientist, doing Biology A-level or use a microscope at home, I feel I have achieved something. In this case, we had 21% think about becoming a scientist, 16% think about A-level biology and 30% consider using a microscope as a hobby.
And this is what some of the students wrote, showing their aspirations:
- ROTIFERS! Cute little tardigrades. I want a doctorate in microbiology.
- Tardigrades have a tun state. Rotifers can survive. There is careers about single organisms
- Tardigrades – survive extreme conditions, different types of tardigrades, get a PhD from studying microorganisms
Probably the most unexpected but biggest win for me was: ‘I want a doctorate in microbiology‘. Obviously I have no idea if that student will go on to do that, or if this single Moss Safari had any long term impact. But just imagine, if this Moss Safari changed the course of one student’s life to go into a STEM career, it has to be worth it.
What I’d do differently
Many students fed back that they would have liked longer using the microscopes. It is difficult to judge the amount of time to introduce and demo the Moss Safari so they have enough information to get the most from their own Moss Safari. I could flip it on it’s head, let them look at a Moss Squeeze droplet and then do the intro and demo afterwards. However, pedagogically that is not particularly sound.
I wanted them to have a go at doing the Moss Squeeze, but was glad in this case that I just provided the prepared squeeze. I realise that would have taken even more time away from observing using the microscopes and also due to Covid, some students’ practical skills are limited.
Some students fed back that they wanted to see particular organisms e.g. the tardigrade. The nature of Moss Safari is that it is based on chance and we rarely get to see all the Big Five. I could of course have cultures to hand with the organisms available to view, but for me that somehow takes the ‘discovery’ part of Moss Safari away. I will continue to think about this.
This was the first secondary school session I had done in this format (previously I had run an after school science club). It was quite full on, but as it happened, I am pleased with how it went, what I learnt and most importantly the impact the sessions had on most students.
Thanks to the Science Teachers and Technicians for making me so welcome and to the students for getting involved.
Resources
All resources are downloadable from this folder
Please let me know what you use and how it went, I am always interested in how teachers, students and others use the Moss Safari resources. Contact.
Moss Safari 