The Butterfly Life Cycle!

Today I had another great experience teaching the 2nd graders. They never stop surprising me on how smart they are!  Lindsay and I did a wrap up lesson on the butterfly by explaining to the students the stages in its life cycle.  This was a fun lesson, because the students were able to make connections between what they have already learned so far with the new concept.   Like always,  the students were able to remember a lot of the information we previously taught them, which is always an assuring feeling.  In order to teach the students about the life cycle, Lindsay and I decided to have the 2nd graders build a paper-plate model with pasta. We used four different types of pasta to represent the different stages: orzo for eggs, corkscrew for the caterpillar, shells for the chrysalis, and bow-tie for the butterfly.  All in all the activity was successful, and we were able to somewhat incorporate the focus point of the week, which was technology and engineering.  In order to incorporate technology and engineering, we found a framework that stated: 1.3 Identify and describe the safe and proper use of tools and materials (e.g., glue, scissors, tape, ruler, paper, toothpicks, straws, spools) to construct simple structures.  I wish we could have better incorporated this into our lesson; we were able to have the students use some of these materials, but we should have given better instructions on how to properly use them.  At times, I found students trying to put glue on their small pieces of pasta, rather than just put glue on the plate and put the pasta on top. When I saw this occur, I would go over and show the correct way of using the glue, but it would have been more beneficial if I instructed the whole class on using the tools before starting the activity. This activity had a lot of difficult steps, in which the students needed broken down.     

In our lesson plan, Lindsay and I almost thought we allotted too much time for the activity, but I am glad we did because it was a very difficult project for the class.  Lindsay and I had to break the steps of the activity down into very small pieces, and we found it to be very challenging.  Even though we had a visual model, written directions, and we gave oral directions throughout the activity, students still needed a lot of assistance.  In the end though, all the models looked amazing, and the students were able to learn about the life cycle in a meaningful, hands-on way. We closed our lesson with a brain pop video on the butterfly, which was a good review of everything we have covered in our lessons thus far, and also a good introduction for our next lesson on all different types of life cycles. The students loved the video, and it was another great way to teach our key question about the stages of a life cycle.  I believe that  the students were able to develop a deep understanding of the life cycle since Lindsay and I had them make connections to previous knowledge, make a model, and watch a video. The lesson was designed to benefit a variety of learning styles.  I have learned so much from this experience thus far, and I am sad that next week will be out last lesson.