Making research fly in schools: Drosophila as a powerful modern tool for teaching Biology

The droso4schools project is a novel and creative approach to bringing the fruit fly Drosophila back into school biology lessons. These small insects are powerful, modern teaching tools, ideal for explaining many concepts that underlie curriculum-relevant biology specifications and illustrating the links between them. Flies are cost-effective and easy to breed, and offer opportunities for exciting and memorable experiments that reflect relevant, contemporary research. As is explained here, the droso4schools project aims to inform teachers about these opportunities and provide them with the means to set up biology lessons with Drosophila at their respective schools. To achieve this, PhD students worked for several weeks as teaching assistants in a partner school and college and subsequently developed and thoroughly tested sample lessons which can now be downloaded for free, together with adjoined support materials. Furthermore, the lessons are complemented by two short, entertaining, educational YouTube films as well as a dedicated droso4schools website with resources that can be used for lesson preparation, homework tasks or revision.