Mushroom Management

1
Mushroom Management
Sana Fischbach Thankful William Henry
Jones LouAnne Schulte
2
The Mushroom Management technique

• The Mushroom management technique has 4 steps
• 1. Put them in the dark
• 2. Feed them manure
• 3. Stand back and let them grow
• 4. Cut off their heads and ship them out

3
The first step in Mushroom Management is put
them in the dark. In other words, the teacher
needs to lead students to see a dilemma and have
them talk about their feelings, express their
concerns, and explore options. They need to
break through the ground of their original
thinking.
4
The next step in Mushroom Management is to feed
manure. In other words, students need to
collect , organize, and use information. At this
stage they develop an understanding of the
problem or dilemma.
5
Step three requires the teacher to stand back
and watch them grow. At this point the students
need to use their new abilities and insights to
manipulate the information.
6
The final step in Mushroom Management involves
culminating activities that help to bring the
pieces together. Students need to transfer their
learning to real life applications and assess
their own learning.
7
Application of Mushroom Management
I do not have my own classroom, so I can only
hypothesize what I would do. I think that I
would begin with a science/physics lesson. -I
will show my students several examples of
momentum and inertia, using a variety of
materials. -I will not explain the principles,
merely asking them open-ended questions about why
they think something happens. (put them in the
dark) -I will provide materials for the students
to experiment with and study, including reference
books and web sites. (feed them manure) -I
will provide time for the students to create
their own theories about physics. (stand back
and watch them grow) -I will expect them to come
up with an explantaion of what and why something
happens and to create an experiment that shows
the principle at work. -They will present their
experiment and explanation to the class. (Chop
off their heads and ship them) Sana Fishback
Thankful
8
Mushroom Management in High School English

• Put Them in the Dark
• Show Film Lean on Me about a college debate team
  that debates the question of who should decide
  whether or not women should get an abortion
• Express feelings in writing
• As a class analyze debate techniques used facts,
  statistics, expert opinion, emotion, anecdotal
  story, etc.

• Feed Manure
• Students select a social issue to present their
  opinion on by brainstorming ideas including
  looking at newspapers, Internet news, television
  news
• Search library online card catalog
• Search Online Data Base Helps narrow topic with
  use of subcategories
• Search Internet

• Stand Back and Watch Them Grow
• Take notes
• Formulate 3 Reasons for opinion
• Create chart to connect quotes to reasons
• Collect Pictures
• Study effects of color on presentations
• Create planning slides for power point.

• Chop Off Their Heads and Ship Them
• Create Power Point illustrating point of view and
  call to action
• Present to class

LouAnne Smith Schulte
9
Mushroom management and ESL college students

• My classroom is a little bit different than most
  american classrooms. My class is supposed to
  learn about American Cinema and Culture. They
  learn about how culture effects the movies, and
  vice versa. I present the basic information, and
  then we try to understand the more important
  questions of WHY?
• In order to get the class to ask the question, I
  show them classic American movies. (I have put
  them in the dark, figuratively and literally) We
  then go over it using the information I have
  lectured on. (I have fed them their manure),
  and as the class goes on, I give them less and
  less information and make them decipher the
  films, to see how culture is effected, or if the
  movies reflect society (standing back and letting
  them grow). At the end of the class they have to
  be able to answer the question Do movies effect
  society or to they reflect society? They finish
  the class, and move on (step 4, cutting off their
  heads and shipping them.
• William Jones

10
Reflection on Mushroom Management
It is hard to say how this lesson, or series of
lessons will go over. I am interested to try
this in a classroom. I think that it will take a
lot of modeling for students to be able to work
independently, with no clear right answer.
ETC 547-Powerpoint I have worked with powerepoint
before and like the medium. I have not, however,
saved it as a web page. I did not have PP loaded
on my computer before this class, so hopefully
everything works well. It would be nice to be
able to use PP often in a classroom to guide
lectures and as an advance organizer, but I don't
think that many classrooms have the ability to
display PP presentations. I think that PP
presentations would be a good way for students to
organize their thoughts and notes in many
areas. Sana Fischbach Thankful
11
Reflection on Mushroom Management
I found myself thinking through assignments that
I have already done with my students, and chose
the one I presented because I think it falls
under the category of Mushroom Management. I
have had a lot of success with this unit both in
motivation and product produced. I use this
activity to help prepare students for the
standardized testing that requires them to be
able to support their point of view.
I enjoy using Power Point in my classroom both
for presenting information to students and having
my students use it as a presentation method. I
thought I knew all about it until I needed to
save it as a web page.
Putting this together as a team has been
challenging. We are still working on it.
LouAnne Smith Schulte
12
My reflections on mushroom management

• When I first read the principles behind mushroom
  management I thought to myself, that would be
  great in grade school. At a young age you want
  to excite the students, you want them to feel
  like they have accomplished something (even if
  everyone else is doing it too), but I did not
  think it would work at a college level. I still
  have many misgivings about it at the college
  level, but I have also had a shift in my own
  realizations. I do mushroom manage my classes.
  But my mushroom management is not in the form a
  weekly assignments, but in the form of the whole
  semester. By the end of the semester my students
  are able to watch a movie, any movie and tell me
  who the key people are, what they have done, what
  the theme of the movie is, what effects have been
  used, and how that makes them feel. I do use
  mushroom management.
• I have had several very difficult weeks, and have
  hurt my team, but Im very glad they have stuck
  beside me and have allowed me to continue with
  this.
• William Jones