About us - Guardians of the Gut

Acknowledgements

We are very grateful to our funders, without whom, this work would not be possible.

This lesson plan was developed as part of our larger Guardians of the Gut public engagement programme, funded by a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellowship, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, who provide strategic support to the Quadram Institute.

We would like to thank the scientists who gave up their time to develop and test the activities in schools and the teachers and schools who hosted our pilot workshops and provided us with feedback.

Scientists

Cristina Alcon

Dr Zoe Schofield

Dr Cho Zin Soe

Dr Melissa Lawson

Dr Lindsay Hall

Schools

Cringleford Primary School

Hevingham Primary School

Wicklewood Primary School

The videos were clear, the pauses and recaps worked well and alongside my discussions with the class, having the scientist building them up with images helped immensely – repetition is always good for children! The Human Body section was straight forward but brought out some excellent misconceptions about organ position. The class liked creating the microbiome cups in section two, and found it really good fun identifying the different microbiome groups. The last section took some thought ahead of time to understand the subject matter but it seems straight forward now. Next time I will add coloured bibs so the role of the children is nice and clear – gut, pathogen or beneficial bacteria.

Sam Gibbons, Year 5/6 teacher, Hevingham Primary School

The children were all interested and engaged. The video was informative and engaging and the activities were all pitched well and interesting.
The activities were easy for me as a teacher to facilitate but I would not teach all three activities in a single session as the third activity (antibiotics) needed more time than I gave it. Also, next time I would explain what each child needs to do in the antibiotics role play game, rather than getting them to read the information on the character cards.

Mrs Barber, Year 5, Cringleford Primary School

We would also like to thank communications manager Andy Chapple from the Quadram Institute for ﬁlming and editing the video of Dr Lindsay Hall, developmental psychologist Dr Georgia Panagiotaki from the Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia for designing and testing the quiz, and evaluating the educational resources, and science communication specialist Dr Jenni Rant from the SAW Trust for project management.

Finally, thanks to Rob Skinn from A Fine Studio for designing and building this fab website!