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Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science
Classroom Resources > Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science > 3. Animal Life Cycles > 3.4 Animal Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Mary Bitterlich, Lakewood, CO
K-2, 3-5, 6-8
Animal Life Cycles Animal Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Mary Bitterlich, Lakewood, CO
Mary Bitterlich, Lakewood, CO
"Science is just about my students' favorite subject now, and honestly, years ago when I was teaching, I wouldn't say that was true–you know, there wasn't as much excitement by the kids when you started a new unit. But with the actual exploring built into the curriculum, all the things they do themselves, it gets them excited, and that's a big part of what's fun about teaching science."
School at a Glance:
Glennon Heights Elementary School
Enrollment: 257
Students per teacher: 15.9
17.5% Hispanic
1.5% American Indian
Percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch: 18% versus a state average of 32%
Mary Bitterlich teaches third grade at Glennon Heights Elementary School in Lakewood, CO, a suburb of Denver west of the city, toward the mountains. Lakewood is a quiet middle-class community that has watched the population in the Denver area explode during the past thirty years. Founded in 1958, the school has seen what was once a sparsely built stretch of land between Denver and the mountains fill in with young communities full of new homes.
About 25% of the school's 270 children are from minority populations. Glennon Heights' students' state test scores tend to be consistent with or higher than state averages.
Mary credits her children's interest in science to the hands-on nature of the subject, and she has noticed that her school's new curriculum, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study's (B.S.C.S.) Science T.R.A.C.S. (Teaching Relevant Activities for Concepts and Skills), does a good job encouraging children to explore and use their hands and minds. She feels it has made a big difference: "Not only is that a great way for the kids to learn, but it's also a fun way to teach the kids, because they're so involved, so motivated, so engaged…Science is their favorite subject now, and years ago, I wouldn't say that was true." Life science especially appeals to them, said Mary, because of the many ways they can connect to the subject matter.
Lesson and Curriculum
Investigating Life Cycles; Science T.R.A.C.S.
Lesson at a Glance:
Curriculum: Science T.R.A.C.S. (Teaching Relevant Activities for Concepts and Skills), Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company
Grade: Third
Topic: Life Cycles
Prior to the activity featured in the video for Session 3, Mary worked with her class on life cycles. In the unit's first activity, she gave her students pictures of animals or plants and asked them to answer the question: "What was it before?" Without any other guidance, the students worked in small groups and drew what they thought represented an earlier stage of each plant and animal's life. "A lot were accurate, a lot not totally accurate, and in some cases they were totally wrong," said Mary.
In the next activity, Mary presented her class with a jar containing several objects and asked them to sort the contents. Inside were adults, larvae (mealworms), and pupae of the darkling beetle. Working in small groups and then as a class, the students decided that the objects were "beetles," "worms," and "some dead stuff," with the pupae being the dead stuff. She then gave each group three empty baby food jars and had them sort the objects for further observation.
The class monitored the jars over the next several days. Soon the pupae matured into beetles, causing Mary's students to decide that the "dead stuff" was actually "beetle eggs." Then the mealworms were observed to develop into pupae. "The kids just exploded with thoughts," said Mary, "and then we probably had a good 30-45 minute talk as a class and in small groups…the groups came back together and presented their findings. And in that talk, they discovered the life cycle for themselves."
To synthesize their ideas, Mary gave each of her students a paper plate and a piece of paper with pictures of an egg, larva, pupa, and an adult beetle on it. The students were to cut out the pictures, label them, and place them clockwise on the plate in the order of a beetle's life cycle. At the end, in an effort to give her students a notion of the life cycle as a series of successive generations of individual beetle's lives, she had her students put their plates together, making the class's life cycle model a spiral rather than a simple circle.
Reflect on Your Teaching
Lesson Goals:
Students observe and identify the life stages of a typical insect.
Students understand that animals progress through sequential stages that include a beginning, immature stages, and an adult stage.
Consider the goals for this lesson as listed above. How can you create a lesson appropriate for your students that will fulfill similar goals?
Series Directory
0 Bottle Biology | Bottle Basics
1 TerrAqua Column
2 TerrAqua Column | Track Our Progress: Is It Alive?
3 TerrAqua Column | Track Our Progress: What Is It? | Terrestrial System
4 TerrAqua Column | Track Our Progress: What Is It? | Aquatic System
5 TerrAqua Column | Track Our Progress: Now You See It
6 Field Population System
7 Track Our Progress: Assessing Variation
8 Track Our Progress: Selective Herbivory
10 Brassica & Butterfly System
10 Track Our Progress: Brassica and Butterfly Life Cycles
11 Track Our Progress: The Salad Bar
12 Track Our Progress: Mother Knows Best
13 The EcoColumn
14 Track Our Progress: Basically, I'm a Fungi
15 Track Our Progress: Decomposition Tea
1 What Is Life?
1 What Is Life? | A Closer Look
2 Children's Ideas
3 Featured Classroom: LauraJo Kelly, Brooklyn, NY
4 Bottle Biology
2 Classifying Living Things
2 Classifying Living Things | A Closer Look
3 Children's Ideas about Classifying Living Things
4 Featured Classroom: Stephanie Selznick, Dorchester, MA
7 Bottle Biology Spotlight: Session 2
3 Animal Life Cycles
2 Animal Life Cycles: A Closer Look
3 Animal Life Cycles: Children's Ideas
4 Animal Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Mary Bitterlich, Lakewood, CO
7 Animal Life Cycles: Bottle Biology Spotlight
4 Plant Life Cycles
2 Plant Life Cycles: A Closer Look
3 Plant Life Cycles: Children's Ideas
4 Plant Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Sally Florkiewicz, Lakewood, CO
7 Plant Life Cycles: Bottle Biology Spotlight
5 Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection
2 Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection: A Closer Look
4 Featured Classroom: Dr. Kathleen Vandiver, Lexington, MA
6 Evolution and the Tree of Life
2 Evolution and the Tree of Life: A Closer Look
4 Featured Classroom: Gail Modugno, Springfield, MA
7 Energy Flow in Communities
2 Energy Flow in Communities: A Closer Look
4 Featured Classroom: Melissa Minnick, Walkersville, MD
8 Material Cycles in Ecosystems
2 Material Cycles in Ecosystems: A Closer Look
3 Children's Ideas About Material Cycles in Ecosystems
4 Featured Classroom: MaryAnn Bernstein, Burlington, MA
Produced by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 2003.
3.2 Animal Life Cycles: A Closer Look
3.3 Animal Life Cycles: Children's Ideas
3.4 Animal Life Cycles: Featured Classroom – Mary Bitterlich, Lakewood, CO
3.7 Animal Life Cycles: Bottle Biology Spotlight
session 0 Bottle Biology | Bottle Basics
Session 1 What Is Life?
What distinguishes living things from dead and nonliving things? No single characteristic is enough to define what is meant by "life." In this session, five characteristics are introduced as unifying themes in the living world.
Session 2 Classifying Living Things
How can we make sense of the living world? During this session, a systematic approach to biological classification is introduced as a starting point for understanding the nature of the remarkable diversity of life on Earth.
Session 3 Animal Life Cycles
One characteristic of all life forms is a life cycle — from reproduction in one generation to reproduction in the next. This session introduces life cycles by focusing on continuity of life in the Animal Kingdom. In addition to considering what aspects of life cycles can be observed directly, the underlying role of DNA as the hereditary material is explored.
Session 4 Plant Life Cycles
What is a plant? One distinguishing feature of members of the Plant Kingdom is their life cycle. In this session, flowering plants serve as examples for studying the plant life cycle by considering the roles of seeds, flowers, and fruits. A comparison to animal life cycles reveals some surprising similarities and intriguing differences.
Session 5 Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection
What causes variation among a population of living things? How can variation in one generation influence the next generation? In this session, variation in a population will be examined as the "raw material" upon which natural selection acts.
Sessions 6 Evolution and the Tree of Life
Why are there so many different kinds of living things? Comparing species that exist today reveals a lot about their relationships to one another and provides evidence of common origins. This session explores the theory of evolution: change in species over time.
Session 7 Energy Flow in Communities
Communities are populations of organisms that live and interact together. The structure of a community is defined by food web interactions. The process of energy flow is the focus of this session as the interactions between producers, consumers, and decomposers are examined.
Session 8 Material Cycles in Ecosystems
Studying an ecosystem involves looking at interactions between living things as well as the nonliving environment that surrounds them. Life depends upon the nonliving world for habitat, as well as energy and materials. In this session, material cycles will be explored as critical processes that sustain life in an ecosystem.
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