Butterflies, Butterflies, Butterflies

Introduction:Your class has has been asked to create a Butterfly Museum complete with several halls of exhibits.

Task:You will research different types of butterflies, their habitats, and life cycles. The class will be divided into groups that will construct the various parts of the museum. Interactive components such as PowerPoint presentations, Claymation movies and webpages will be a part of your museum. After it is complete, your families and guests will be invited to the Grand Opening. Refreshments will be served.

Process:

1. Review what you see in a museum. Discuss possible parts of a butterfly museum and jobs. Divide up the work.
2. Looking at a map of the United States, students pair up and pick one state. Visit the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center website and choose a butterfly that lives in that state. Download the picture of your butterfly and print out pertinent information. Talk about using search engines on the Internet.
3. Using a United States map (made with MapMakers Toolkit) plot the location of your butterfly. Place a picture and title of your butterfly on the state it comes from.
4. Following the homework assignment sheet, fill in the data retrieval chart, write a report and create a model of your butterfly.
5. In the meantime, in the classroom, set up the butterfly habitat and observe the butterfly larva. You can look at them close-up by placing them in petrie dishes and using magnifying glasses. Soon they will need to be moved to a cup with paper on the top so that they can crawl to the top and attach themselves.
6. Write about the different stages of the butterfly in a journal or shape book.
7. Review fiction and realistic fiction genres. Create realistic fictional stories about butterflies.
8. Create butterfly cinquains using the draft worksheet. Write your final copy on the final page and decorate around the poem.
9. Read books about butterflies.
10. Watch videos about butterflies: Magic Schoolbus "Butterflies"; Eyewitness "Butterfly and Moth"; Audubon Society "Butterflies for Beginners"
11. Write in your observations of the classroom butterflies in a science journal.
12. In art class, create positive and negative space butterflies. Create a butterfly printing block and make some prints with your block, a brayer and ink.
13. Learn some butterfly songs in music class.
14. In the computer lab, illustrate the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle using KidPix.
15. As a class, divide up important facts about butterflies and practice one fact each.
16. Small group work:
    1. Videographers: Record each student in the class saying their butterfly fact. Then work with an adult to edit all of the facts into one continuous tape to be played at the museum.
    2. PowerPoint group: Collect the pictures from the photographers and organize them into categories. Decide which ones will be used in the presentation and what your slides will be called. Create the presentation and write a script. Divide up who will say what part of the script at the Grand Opening. Practice. (our PowerPoint presentation covered all the things done during the unit)
    3. Claymation: Create a storyboard to show the different frames of the Claymation movie. Divide up the work among the group (who will photograph, who will construct the clay props). Create and take the pictures. Knit them together into a movie or two. Copy the movie to several computers in the lab and classroom.
    4. Webpage group: Decide what needs to go on the pages. Figure out how they will be linked to the school site and to each other. Create a storyboard of how the pages will look. Design the artwork. Figure out the text. Using a webpage editor, create the webpages and link them together. Upload the pages. Bookmark the site for parents to see.
    5. Class photographers: Take pictures during the whole unit. Record the shots in your photographers log.
    6. Docents: Divide up the halls of the museum and usher visitors around. (greeters, museum halls: classroom, school halls, computer lab with PowerPoint presentation, Claymation and website)
17. Create a program for the museum. Everyone designs a cover. Class votes on the cover they want to use. Scan the picture and create the inside of the program.
18. Day before the museum opens, create, bake and decorate butterfly cookies.
19. Make sure that all of the displays are up and visible. (reports, models, stories, journals, presentations in the computer lab)
20. Create displays on walls, windows and in the hall using all of the work you created during the unit.
21. Construct a banner welcoming people to the museum.

Day of the Museum:

1. Greeters meet guests in the school lobby, give them a program and direct them to the media center.
2. PowerPoint presenters welcome the guests and show the presentation highlighting all of the activities during the unit. Then invite the guests to tour the museum.
3. Students go with their parents or play the part of docents.
4. Parents visit all of the halls and enjoy the refreshments.
5. Show the butterfly fact video at the end of the museum opening.
6. Hand out customer satisfaction surveys to see how the guests enjoyed the museum.

Day after the museum:

1. Students fill out unit assessment form and complete a unit test taken from the science curriculum guide.
2. Review the customer satisfaction surveys.

Assessment: A customer satisfaction survey was given to museum visitors. Each student filled out a butterfly unit survey to find out how they enjoyed working on the museum and if they thought they had learned a lot about butterflies. In addition, students took a unit test to assess their understanding of the material.

The completed butterfly website and Claymation movies can be accessed at http://www.fcps.edu/KingsParkES/technology/bfly/index.htm

To download the PowerPoint presentation highlighting different parts of the unit click here: Butterfly PowerPoint Presentation

To see pictures from the unit, click on the butterfly.

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Unit created by Merrell Dade and Karen Summerhill
Page created byBrooks Widmaier
April 18, 2002