Microscopic Communities: Interdisciplinary Exploration of Microbes in the Classroom

Children are aware of microbes from a young age and are rightly encouraged to wash their hands to prevent illness. However, myriad microbes live in, on, and around us, most of which are benign or beneficial. Our goal was to teach elementary students about microbiota by leveraging familiar literacy practices, social studies themes, and the arts to advance students’ knowledge and reasoning skills in science. With this perspective in mind, we developed and implemented an interdisciplinary unit targeted at second grade, in which students learned about microbes and microbial communities. Our goal was to further students’ conceptual knowledge of the microbes that surround them by purposefully integrating microbial communities within the second grade curriculum. Throughout the unit, students engaged in hands-on, inquiry-based science experiences and used multimodal communication (through a combination of linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial modes): they sampled microbes from their own bodies and/or environments and applied their knowledge and imagination to create their own microbes through art and story-telling, generating a class microbial community—both literal and artistic. At the end of the unit, students demonstrated knowledge of microbes and of the diversity and ubiquity of microbial communities and habitats.