Butterfly Life Cycle
Information for Teachers
General Information
This is a web resourced, integrated unit of work, which has been developed to increase the understandings of students in the Primary Years Bands about the life cycle of butterflies. The unit has been aligned with the SACSA frameworks and is intended to provide learning in the areas of Science, English, Mathematics, The Arts, Health and P.E., leading towards outcomes in Curriculum Standard 2. 
 
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Adobe Acrobat PDF Format

Wherever possible, the activities in the unit have been developed to engage students in a variety of learning and thinking tasks and designed using the Bloom's Taxonomy and Extended Brainstorming models in an endeavour to achieve a differentiated and inclusive learning environment for all students. However, in some instances, the lack of appropriate web resources for a particular activity has precluded this approach.

The Structure of the Unit
The unit commences with an Introduction, in which the students' thinking is guided to the topic of butterfly life cycles with several questions to facilitate the recall of prior knowledge. A motivational statement then invites and encourages students to proceed to the Task section. Here they are provided with a clear explanation of the task and the learning expectations. They are given choices and are able to select from a variety of activities. This gives them some control over their learning and enables them to select tasks that suit their interest and learning styles.

Students are invited at that point to print a checklist for recording the activities they have completed and a rubric which shows them how their work will be evaluated. (All the documents on this site are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format)

Students then proceed to the Process and Resources section, where they are able to access the activities. Navigation is logical and simple and graphics are used to assist younger students.  With the exception of the first activity in each module, which is mandatory, as it assesses prior knowledge and provides a learning focus for the module, students may proceed through the activities independently in any order that they wish.
All the necessary resources have been embedded within each activity and have been provided as either separate pages or web links to appropriate sites. This provides scaffolding to support young students and makes effective use of their time. When activities require worksheets on which to record information, a link is provided within the activity to enable them to be printed when required.
Students work with a partner to encourage cooperative learning.

Having completed six activities, students are asked to demonstrate their learning through a KidPix Slide Show.  Links to examples of student Slide Shows on the web, as well as instructions on how to create slide shows are provided on the page. The Slide Show forms part of the student evaluation.
Other Evaluation comprises of student self-assessment and assessment,  as well as teacher evaluation of the finished products. These are assessed according to the criteria on the evaluation rubric that students printed prior to the commencement of the unit and to which they have hopefully been referring during the course of their work.

In the Conclusion of the unit some environmental issues are raised, which students are invited to pursue independently if they wish.

Students are then invited to participate in some volunatry fun activities on the Fun and Games  page. These

It is assumed that students have had some prior experience on the web and have mastered some basic skills.

Additional Information
Although the unit is completely resourced, it is anticipated that other resources such as caterpillar larvae, CD-ROMs, books, charts and videos will be accessible to students to supplement and extend extend their learning off the web.

A list of useful web resources and acknowledgement of information and graphic sources is provided on the References and Acknowledgements page.

Jackie Miers
Teacher-Librarian
 
 
© 2000 Jackie Miers

December,  2004