|
 |
Mini-Lessons to Pollinate the Mind |
- Challenge your students by taking the "Why?" approach to scientific
investigation of insects. Ask the students to think of 5-10 questions that
begin with "Why" and make a list of all the questions. The students
can do this while watching an insect in the field or in the laboratory or after
hearing a lecture about insects. Tell them that no "why question" is
too "unscientific." Read the questions aloud and ask for class
responses to the questions. This can be done over several class periods if
necessary. Ask each student to select one question and make a list of potential
answers. This is the "hypothesis" stage. Ask the students to then
select one potential answer and devise an experiment to test its validity.
This will require the students to ask other questions, such as "what,
where, when, and how." This is the experimental stage. Be certain to
point out to the students that scientific hypotheses are not always proven to
be correct.
- Invite an entomologist or an entomology expert from the state Extension Service
to visit the classroom and talk about insects and entomology as a career.
- Invite a pest control operator to visit the classroom and talk about
insects and insect pest control as a career.
- Invite a beekeeper in the area to speak to the class.
- Give the students the name of an insect pest and have the
students find an insect enemy that might control this pest. Students
should list the reference where they found the answer.
- Print out pictures of various insects from pages on the Internet
and give to the students. Have the students try to locate the
same picture on the Internet to develop Internet searching skills.
- Have the students bring in product labels for things containing
insect by-products such as makeup, candles, lubricants, honey,
and items make from silk.
- Have the students collect actual specimens or find pictures
of different species of ladybugs. Use a magnifying glass and
compare the spots each species has as well as the overall color
of each insect.
- Order an ant farm for the classroom and observe the ants'
activities. Sources are found at
Ant
Farms and Bright World Ant
Farms.
The
Secret Lives of Ants has six (6) activities relating to the study of ants.
- Have the students bring items from home that remind them of
insect body parts. For example, a sponge is like a fly's mouthparts.
Pliers operate like a grasshopper's jaw. See how many other
items the class can find.
- Go on a spiderweb search and see how many different designs
the class can find during a two-week period. Early morning is
a good time to look for them. Have the class sketch the ways
they observe the spiders spinning their webs, or take along a
piece of posterboard and some spray paint. Placing the posterboard
behind the spider web, gently spray the web with paint. Care
should be taken not to spray directly on anything such as a house,
car, or another person. Gently remove the posterboard from behind
the web, and its image will be seen in the paint's surface.
- Using yarn or string, create a spider web on a bulletin board. Have the
students find spider facts to put in the web. Alternatively, students might
design webs or draw actual spider webs using protractors and rulers. If realistic
webs are drawn, have the students also draw or put in a picture of the spider
that produces the type web the student has displayed. Students should write
spider facts to go along with the webs they have drawn. For other web
activities, try the book
Designs by Dale
Seymour, Linda Silvey, and Joyce Snider.
- Have the students collect articles relating to insects from local newspapers
and from magazines. Put these together in a scrapbook format, as a bulletin
board, or on posters. Students might want to create a newsletter, a videotaped
program, or a hypermedia project based on the information they learned about
insects from these sources.
- Lessons at other sites:
Farm to supermarket to your dinner table.
- Have the students develop a means of demonstrating how the
process of pollination of flowers by bees occurs.
- Have the students design a T-shirt, bumper sticker, or bookmark using an insect theme such as "Fear no weevil."
- Have the students find examples of insects associated with everyday things such as the Volkswagon "beetle," comic stip characters, or sayings such as "Busy as a bee."
-
Make butterflies using waxed paper and crayons. The following supplies will
be needed: waxed paper, wax crayons, hand grater, scissors, tongue
depressors or popscicle sticks, pipe cleaners, warm iron (lowest setting
possible), and an ironing board. Using a simple outline of a butterfly approximately
6" x 8" in size, cut out two butterflies per student. Grate assorted colors
of crayons and have the students arrange the grated crayon in a pleasing design
on one piece of waxed paper. Ask the students to try to have bilateral
symmetry in their wing patterns. Place the second sheet of waxed paper over
the sheet with the crayon shavings and carefully iron over both sides. (To
avoid getting wax on the ironing board, place a brown paper bag under the waxed
paper before beginning to iron.) Place the tongue depressor or popscicle stick
down the center of the wings and staple or tape it to the wings. Fasten the
pipe cleaner to the stick for antennae.
- Have the students work on one of these worksheets:
- Research Questions:
- By what process are paper nests made by insects insulated?
- How is the bumblebee able to fly?
- What makes a lightning bug (glowworm) glow?
- Have there been other epidemics besides the Bubonic Plague (Black Death)
of the 14th century that have devastated human populations?
- Consider what effects would be caused if all the insects on earth (or even
one order of insects) disappeared from the earth.
|
