Online Arthropod Activities for Different Grade Levels

Grade School

List of Insect Labs and Activities (http://master.ph.utexas.edu/TxVC/TreeOfLife/JMcFarland/mcfarland/insects/labs/lablist.htm)

Includes activities such as Insect Engagement Activity, Cricket Talk, Insect Identification, or Just What Is It? and Adopt A Bug!

The Insect World Activities (http://discoveryschool.com/spring99/programs/insectworld/activities.html)

Simple behavioral and structural observation activities. Includes simple mathematical analysis of data.

Five Insect Activities including Social Behavior of Ants and Ant Training (http://204.122.127.80/pwc/lessplan.htm#science)

All deal with ants. Excellent teacher's manual.

Exploring Urban Biodiversity - City Bugs (http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/explore/ )

Includes much information and many activities pertinent to younger students. A good starting point for teachers who feel a need to update their own background prior to engaging in different activities. Largely taxonomy-based.

 

Foraging Behavior at Picnics: The Ants' View (http://www.owu.edu/~mggrote/pp/zoology/f_zoology.html)

Excellent site with lots of information regarding ants and activities involving ants and ant behavior (K-3, though customizable for older students).

 

Terrestrial Invertebrates (http://www.owu.edu/~mggrote/pp/zoology/c_terrestrial.html)

Activity aimed at determining arthropod diversity (K-3, though customizable for older students).

Using Live Insects in

Using Live Insects in Elementary Classrooms for Early Lessons in Life (http://insected.arizona.edu/uli.htm)

Program dedicated to introducing health topics to children in kindergarten through third grade. Printable collection of twenty integrated lessons with science and math activities that use live insects. These lessons are aligned with National Science Education Standards (NSES).

 

Insects Curriculum Index (http://wings.ucdavis.edu/Curriculums/Insects/)

K-8 insect activity bank.

 

Bug Club Antivities (http://bugweb.entnem.ufl.edu/bugclub/antivity.htm)

Florida 4-H Bug Club sites offers beginning, intermediate and adcvanced activities.

Middle School Resources

The Transformers (http://www.cals.ncsu.edu:8050/course/ent591k/trans.html)

Focus of the activities are types of metamorposis, life cycles and rearing, arthtopod culturing techniques, etc.

Y.E.S. Minibeast World of Insects and Spiders (http://members.aol.com/YESedu/mainmenu.html)

Home Page for the Young Entomologists Society. Includes links to massive amounts of information, activities and resources.

High School Resources

Advanced Arthropod Studies Curriculum (http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/~dstone/advancedarthropodstudies.html)

Supplement to arthropod study and activities students typically encounter in high school level biology, ecology and environmental sciences classes. Each component may be used individually or may be integrated with others in whatever way is most meaningful to individual teaching situations. These activities lend equally well to cooperative or independent learning situations. All of these projects require use of the Internet-based resources as a the major resources in gaining further knowledge. Each project is tied to real-world knowledge, not memorization and abstractions. Many of the projects have a myriad of project extensions. Curricular activities are Microarthropod Collection and Examination, Microarthropod Variation and Taxonomy, Quantitative Study of Arthropod Ecology, Determination of Evolutionary Relationships Using Biology Workbench Education Enhancements, Scientific Proposal Writing Using the Bugscope Model and Introduction to Online Scientific Journals.