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Return to MenuInterest in Insects in Ray Morris’ 1st - 2nd Grade ClassInsects are everywhere, not only in the wider world around us, but specifically in Ray Morris’ first and second grade classroom. While the walls, cabinets, even the ceiling, are ever crowded with interesting artifacts of a vibrant world, this year, the desks and table spaces have been crawling with insects and other small critters.With a focus on insects, Room 11 children are learning empathy, observation skills, mathematical thinking, art, reading and writing. Beginning in early fall, each child has kept a snail in a container on her/his desk. Taking care of these animals – feeding, watering and finding them when they escaped their containers over night – helped the kids learn to nurture living things. Through the year the class has developed habitat terrariums full of soil, plants, snails, slugs, centipedes, spiders, ants, worms, and other insects. Adding new critters throughout the year, the children see how microhabitats form and change, and how organisms interact in cycles of life and death. With the focus shifting increasingly to insects, the class is now raising butterflies and ladybugs, keeping crickets and an assortment of other bugs brought in from home and the school yard. Keeping these critters crawling enriches other classroom activities … frequent observations encourage discovery and empathy through looking, thinking and enjoying nature; drawing sharpens observation and stimulates inquiry. For example, students are drawing their butterflies from the caterpillar stage through the chrysalis stage and into the adult stage – learning about insect development. Observation and graphing of characteristics such as changing length of caterpillars, the proportion of chrysalis that hatch, or the number of spots on ladybugs stimulate math sense (“numeracy”). In a recent home assignment, the children were asked to map their yard and then plot any insects found on the map. Writing has revolved around the insect theme. One of the culminations of the year’s expedition is a poster display that each child has produced of a chosen insect combining library and internet research, drawing, descriptive and creative writing. Becoming experts on their insects, the children are presenting the results of their research to their class with the posters and oral presentations. Through writing about their insects descriptively and in poems and riddles, students are learning how to organize and present their knowledge and perception in new ways. |
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