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ED 2500 Lesson Plan

Date: Thursday June 18, 2014
Teacher Associate: Laurie Chinn
Student Teacher: Samantha Leriger
Grade: Kindergarten
Topic: Ants!
Lesson length: 10-12 minutes

Outcomes from Alberta Program of Studies
General Learning Outcomes:
1. The child listens, speaks, reads, writes, views and represents to explore thoughts,
ideas, feelings and experiences.
2. The child listens, speaks, reads, writes, views and represents to respect, support and
collaborate with others.
3. Develop number sense.
4. The child explores self-expression through creative thought and through language,
art, movement, music and drama.
Specific Learning Outcomes:
1. Experiments with language and forms: talks and represents to explore, express and
share stories, ideas and experiences.
2. Cooperates with others: participates in class and group activities.
3. Represents and describes numbers 2 to 10, concretely and pictorially.
Learning Objectives
Students will:
1. Demonstrate their knowledge of insect and ant anatomy when creating their craft
ants.
2. Create a name, personality and backstory for their ant when it is completed.
3. Communicate their ants characteristics to another classmate and describe the
reasoning behind their decisions.
Assessments
Observations:
- I will supervise and assist the students during the activity to see if they are applying
their knowledge of ants to the craft (L.O. #1)
- I will listen to students conversations and ask them questions during their partner
work to see if they are thinking creatively and critically about ants and effectively
communicating this information (L.O. #2 and L.O. #3)
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Key Questions:
- If ants are insects, how many legs do they have?
- What are the different parts of the ant called? (attenae, mandibles, legs, eyes, head,
thorax, abdomen)
- Where are ants found? (in colonies, underground)
- How do ants generally behave? (as part of a colony, with different roles for male
ants, worker ants, the queen ant, etc.)
- What are the stages of the ant life cycle? (egg, larva, pupa, adult)
Learning Resources Consulted
1) Alberta Education Program of Studies
2) Alberta Education Kindergarten Program Statement
3) Ant Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Xq2eQJgIc
4) Ant colony diagram: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/62/db/1e/62db1e112deeee5ecb9e0e105b2c4409.jpg
5) Ant life cycle chart: http://www.rinconvitova.com/images/ant%20life%20cycle.gif
6) Example of Ant craft: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/18/63/6a/18636a049e2eb46b53babf8fbbfceadb.jpg
Materials and Equipment
- egg cartons (pre-cut)
- paint
- pipe-cleaners
- googly eyes
- coloured markers

Procedure
Introduction (3 minutes):

Hook: Show Ant video
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Xq2eQJgIc (2 minutes)
- we will talk about some of the things that the students saw in the video

Body (5 minutes):

Assessment of Prior Knowledge:
- How many legs do ants have?
- The ants body is divided into how many parts? What are the names of these parts?
- What are some of the other features of the ant?

Learning Activity #1: Ant Colonies
- show diagram of Ant colony cross-section: http://media-cache-
ak0.pinimg.com/736x/62/db/1e/62db1e112deeee5ecb9e0e105b2c4409.jpg

- Ants are found on every continent!
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- Ants are social insects
- They live together in big colonies
- They work together to build their hive and collect food
- Every Ant has a specific role within the colony

Learning Activity #2: Ant Life Cycle Chart
- show picture of Ant lifecycle:
http://www.rinconvitova.com/images/ant%20life%20cycle.gif

- There are four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult
- Ant eggs are oval shaped and very small, about 1 mm long
- Larvae have no eyes and no legs. They eat food regurgitated by adult ants. The
larvae molt many times as they grow.
- When larva reach a certain size, they spin a silk cocoon around themselves and
change into their adult form. (Relate this to Butterfly life cycle: Where have we seen
this process before?)
- Pupa emerges as an adult

- There are female worker ants who collect food and care for the larva, and there are
winged male ants called drones
- Ant life cycle usually lasts 6 to 10 weeks (just over 2 months), but some worker ants
can live for up to 7 years and some queens can live for over 15 years!

- Discuss lifecycle with class
o Who lays the eggs?
o What stage comes first? Next?
o At what stage does the ant make a cocoon?
o What does the ant emerge from the cocoon as?
o What are the different kinds of ants in a colony?
o What does the worker ant do? The drone? The queen?

Closure (4 minutes):
- Introduce ant craft
- Show example of ant craft: http://media-cache-
ec0.pinimg.com/736x/18/63/6a/18636a049e2eb46b53babf8fbbfceadb.jpg

- While students are creating their ants, they should be thinking about what kind of
ant they are making, what this ant does, where it lives, what its name is, etc.
- Explain that when they are finished, students will be expected to pair up and
describe their ants to their partner, and explain the reasoning behind their specific
decisions.
Consolidate
- The three sections of the egg cartons represent what?
- How many pipe-cleaner legs will each ant need?
- What other features could you add to your ant?
- What kind of ant will you be making?
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o Where will your ant live? What will your ant do? What will your ants name
be?

Sponge Activity: Making an Ant Colony as a class (can be run as a separate center)
- Outline of an Ant colony in cross section will be drawn on a large piece of white
paper
- Students can take turns finger-painting some of the different types of ants as they
appear throughout the ant lifecycle
- Then finer details, like legs, attenae, mandibles, can be added in afterwards with
markers
- The different kinds of ants and parts of the lifecycle can then be labelled together as
a class

Reflection
What went well?
What would I change in future lessons?

This lesson and activity went very well and was a lot of fun! The students had a bit
of trouble with the egg carton ant bodies though, which were pretty soggy after being
painted, which made inserting pipe-cleaners afterwards relatively difficult. Next time I
would perhaps use three foam balls for each student held together with toothpicks or
something similar in order to make painting and pipe-cleaner insertion easier.
The lesson did go a bit longer than planned (about 15 minutes), because naming the
different parts of the ant and the ant lifecycle each time we did it as a class took some time.
But I think it was a good to have students raise their hands and answer all the questions,
then go through the answers again as a class, and then review them a third time all
together, as the repetition really helped the students learn the facts. Next time I would
perhaps split the ant anatomy and ant lifecycle portions of the lesson into two shorter,
more digestible lessons, as the students did get a bit restless near the end. I would also wait
to introduce the partner work portion of the activity until after the craft was done, as it
took a while to complete the craft and a lot of students needed to be reminded of what they
were supposed to be doing next. So next time I would continue to ask the students to keep
the characteristics of their ants in mind when building them, but then I would let them do
the craft, and when it was completed, would bring them all back to the carpet. I would then
ask some students to share some details about their ants before introducing the partner
work segment of the activity. Labelling the ant together on the whiteboard kept the
students engaged, but next time I would perhaps try to incorporate some sort of ant-
related song or rhyme to break up the monotony of slides and make it more fun for the
students. Overall, I thought the lesson went extremely well and the kids had a lot of fun,
which was great!