A Spider’s Life Cycle

Title – A Spider’s Life Cycle
By – Jennifer Dalke
Subject – Science, Art
Grade Level – 4-5

Unit contents:

• This part deals with the End of the book, and involves launching a Balloon Journey
• Here’s a Writing Activity involving the students’ Favorite Parts
• This section is on the Main Characters and Quoting
• This portion is on Acting Out portions of the book
• This lesson is on Predicting with Charlotte’s Web
• This part uses a Crossword Puzzle to learn Scientific Facts about Spiders
• This section is on Finding Spiders’ Homes
• A similar section – Finding Where Spiders Live
• Here’s More on Finding Where Spiders Live
• This portion is on writing Haiku Poems about Spiders
• Here students take on the roles of Arachnologists and Interview each other
• The Spider’s Life Cycle is the subject of this lesson
• Graphing the Lengths of Spiders is the subject of this part
• More Graphing, this time with Facts about Spiders
• Here students Plot Facts about Spiders
• Another Math lesson, this one using Spider Math Problems
• This part involves doing Research on Spiders
• A fun activity for developing Spider Webs out of cold Spaghetti
• This portion is on Spiders’ Venom
• A Writing Activity about Wilbur’s First Day

Subject: Science Day 2

Illinois State Goals:
11. Understand the processes of scientific inquiry and technological design to investigate questions, conduct experiments and solve problems
12. Understand the fundamental concepts, principles and interconnections of the life, physical and earth/space sciences

Instructional Objective:
After learning about the spider life cycle, students will make a poster that illustrates the life cycle of the spider.

Supplies:
* Spider Magic, by D. H. Patent
* overhead
* transparencies
* posters
* colored markers

Anticipatory Set:
* I will ask the children if they have ever stepped on a spider. Have you ever seen one get killed in your home? Did you ever see another one again? Where do the new ones come from. Do you know how spiders are born. Are they born like people are born? Do they hatch from eggs?
* I will explain to them that spiders are born from eggs. Have you ever seen a spider egg? I will explain to the students that this lesson will teach them many new things about the life and death of spiders

Activities:
1. I will read the story, Spider Magic, by D. H. Patent to the children. I will stress significant points about the life cycle of spiders.
2. I will put up transparencies on the overhead projector to show children the different points in a spider’s life (spider eggs in the egg sacs, spiderlings molting in order to grow, adult spiders, and adult spiders dying or being eaten as part of the food cycle).
3. I will hand out a poster to each child, along with colored markers which they can share. I will instruct students to make their own poster of the spider life cycle. I will instruct them to title their poster, and to make separate drawings of each point in the life of the spider, numbering each point.
4. Student will have about thirty minutes to complete this activity. I will ask each student to bring his/her poster to the front of the room for the rest of the class to see. After showing their posters, each child will hang his/her poster on a designated wall.

Adaptations:
Cassie (LD)- Cassie will be given the same assignment as the rest of the children. I will provide her with a book she may keep at her desk; the book will have numbered pictures of the life cycle.

Closure:
* I will ask the students to comment on the different posters.
* I will sum up the lesson about the life cycle by reiterating each point in a spiders life.

Evaluation:
Students will be evaluated on the fact that their posters show each point of the spider life cycle.
They should be neat, they should be numbered, and they should be titled.

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