Lovin' the Life Cycles

I'm not a fan of bugs so the idea of having ladybugs in my classroom didn't sit well with me. I'm over it now, I think I ended up being the one that was most fascinated by the whole process. We watched the larvae pupate, and change into ladybugs. We released the ladybugs into our garden, which ended up being a little bittersweet. Yes, they're bugs, but our class watched them grow and now it's over.

The day we released the ladybugs.

Over the past few weeks our class has been studying the ladybug and frog life cycles.  The students read two different articles to collect information about the life cycles. They took notes to help them compare and contrast, write summaries, write captions put together illustrations of the life cycles, and give a group presentation.

 Student comparing and contrasting and referring to text. Amazing!

Student poster with Venn diagram and summaries.

Student poster with life cycles. Some added their captions.

This project demonstrated the knowledge my class has learned over the course of the year. Most importantly referring to text. All year long my mantra has been, "Refer to the text." And, to my surprise, they were doing just that all on their own.

The activities were engaging and I could see the kids' curiosity and application of their knowledge. And isn't that what we really want?

Check out this unit!