Who needs simple, meaningful, ready-to-go life cycle lessons that are engaging and fun?
Today, I will share with you three different ways you can teach the concept of life cycles. You're going to love the organization of these life cycle lessons and how easy they are to implement. Your students will love all of the fun and engaging tools!
The three lessons I'm going to share are:
- A study of the Monarch Butterfly
- Complete and Incomplete Metamorphosis using Flipgrid
- The Life Cycle of a Frog
Plus, the three tools you can use to teach the concepts:
Life Cycle Study of the Monarch Butterfly
Most of my science lessons use the 5E's of instruction framework. The Monarch Butterfly unit is no exception. The 5E's of instruction include:
- Engage
- Explore
- Explain
- Elaborate
- Evaluate
Engage
Engage your students by creating what's called a RAN strategy. Ask students the following question – “What do you THINK you know about the Monarch Butterfly.”
The RAN strategy helps in three ways:
- Find out what students know about the topic
- Help with the process of building background knowledge
- Get students excited about the new unit
Explore
Students research and explore the Monarch Butterfly during the explore portion of the 5E's. There are many different ways to learn more about the topic. I provide several resources for students to explore. Students take notes to show what they are learning as they explore the subject.
Some of my favorite tools to explore topics include:
Explain
I love allowing students to use a digital interactive notebook to write about their learning. While it comes in a digital format in which students can manipulate things by dragging and dropping in Google Slides, it also comes as printables that you can print out.
Elaborate
Once they have explored and explained what they've learned about the topic, it's time to elaborate and share what they've learned. There are so many ways to do this, but my favorites include:
- Book Creator
- Seesaw
- DoInk Green Screen Videos
- Interactive Documents in Canva
However, the project doesn't always have to be technology-driven. The main objective is to allow students to consolidate their information into a finished product. I want them to bring it together to show what they know about a topic.
I love to allow students to choose how they present their work. By allowing students to show what they know based on their interests, you will find the projects are of better quality.
Evaluate
The last part of the 5E's of instruction is to reflect on their learning. I typically like to allow students to create the rubrics with me (usually before the elaboration portion of the unit). Students know what to expect when building their projects by doing the rubric together.
The clear benefit of using the 5E's of instructions during a life cycle unit of study is to break things down into manageable chunks. It helps you stay organized and plan your life cycle lessons with ease. It also helps students stay focused.
Life Cycle Lesson about Complete and Incomplete Metamorphosis
This life cycle lesson teaches students about complete and incomplete metamorphosis. Students explore several different types of animals and insects related to the complete, incomplete and simple life cycle.
This unit works through the 5E's of instruction but with a twist. Students use the app Flipgrid to organize their thinking through video.
As you can see from the image above, each lesson is divided into parts. Students are sent to the Flipgrid using task cards. Students either scan or type the URL to gain access to the grid.
Each activity has directions for the task, a link or video to explore the topic, and a way for students to respond to the task using video.
Life Cycle Lesson about Life Cycle of Frog
Lastly, this life cycle lesson is all about the life cycle. While this particular unit does not follow the five E's of instruction framework, it allows students to explore a topic.
I like to use escape rooms for one of two things:
- To build background knowledge and explore a concept or
- To review something that students have already learned
The escape room has four activities:
- Reading Passage and questions about the frog life cycle using Google forms
- Frog Life Cycle Vocabulary using Google Slides
- Putting a puzzle together to grab a clue
- Showing what they've learned about the life cycle of a frog
And there you have it, three different lessons that will fascinate your students. I hope today's post showed you how to get started with these lifecycle lessons. And why your kids are going to love them.
Now I want to turn it over to you? Which of these three lessons from today's post are you going to try first?
Are you going to try researching the monarch butterfly using the five E's for instruction?
Maybe you want to try out Flipgrid with your students to learn about the different types of metamorphosis'.
Or maybe you want to try all three. You can grab it at a discount for purchasing the entire bundle if you do. Click here or on the image below.
Whatever you decide, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.
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