Lesson Plan : Buzzing About Bees
Teacher Name: | Christine Griffin |
Grade: | Grade 3 |
Subject: | Science |
Topic: | Bees |
Content: | Bees |
Goals: | The student will know the parts of a bee and their functions. |
Objectives: | Given a piece of manila paper and cut outs of the following bee parts: head, thorax, abdomen, antenna, wings, and legs, the student will glue the pieces in the correct place onto the manila paper and label each part correctly. Given a worksheet of a bee, the student will correctly label the 6 major parts and identify what each part is used for, with no more than one error. |
Materials: | Jokes KWL Chart (1 for each student and 1 on over head sheet) Overhead projector Blank overhead sheets and markers Cut-outs of a bee: each student get 3 legs, 2 wings and 1 each of head, thorax, abdomen, and antenna Manila paper Glue sticks Writing utensils Scotch tape Overhead of Activity sheet 2: Honey Bee Body Parts Dead bee (1 per student) Magnifying glass (1 per student) Worksheet figure 14-2 Bee body (1 per student) |
Introduction: | To get the students interested in the lesson, I will tell the following jokes to start: 1-Why did the bee go to the doctor? It had hives! 2-What did the bee say to the flower? Hi, Bud! What time fo you open? 3-What did the flower say to the bee? Buzz off! 4-What creature is smart than a talking parrot? A spelling bee When I have all of their attention, I will hand out the KWL chart and put one up on the overhead. I will then ask the class, "What do we know about bees?" I expect to hear some of the following responses, which I will write under the K (Know) column: Bees sting us. They fly. They give us honey. They live in a hive. They are out in summer. I will tell the students that those are all great answers. I will then ask who thinks that bees are good to have around. I do not expect many hands to go up. Then, I will say that bees are actually good in nature, and we will find out why in a little while. First however, we need to gather some questions that we want to know about bees. I will ask students to say a question if they have any, and I will write down under the W-want to know column on the KWL chart. The students should be writing these down as well. After about 5-8 questions given by the students, I will tell them that they are all very good questions and hopefully we will find out the answers to those questions. I will tell them that during we will be learning about that different parts of a bee and what they are used for, and also that we will be looking at a dead bee. |
Development: | I will be using direct instruction to teach this lesson. To begin the lesson, I will say to the students that I have a few interesting facts about bees: ~They are important because they are hard workers. Also, they create honey and help flowers pollinate. I will write the word pollinate on the blank overhead sheet and write the definition "The transfer of pollen from one flower to another." ~There are over 25,000 known species of bees, with tens of thousands more unknown. ~Bees did not always live in America. During the 1500s, bees were brought over here from Spain and England. Then, I will write the words head, thorax, abdomen, antenna, legs, wings on the overhead sheet. I will say a brief description of each: ~The head contains the sensory organs. It is triangular from the front. The tongue is long and hairy which is used to feed on liquids. Mandibles, which are its teeth, are used to eat pollen and build combs. Unlike humans, bees have 5 eyes. They have 2 large eyes, called compound eyes, and 3 smaller eyes above the compound eyes. Bees can only see in a few colors: yellow, blue-green, blue, violet, ultraviolet, and "bee's purple" which is a mix of yellow and ultraviolet. They do not see in red. Inside the compound eyes are thousands of tiny lenses called facets. The antenna is connected to the brain. ~The thorax holds the legs and wings. Bees have 3 pairs of segmented legs. They are mostly used for walking, but the front pair has an antenna cleaner on them and the back pair has pollen baskets. Pollen baskets are used to transport pollen. There are 2 pair of wings: fore wings which are larger and hind wings which are smaller. Just flapping the wings will not help bees fly. The wings make a twisting motion to fly. ~The abdomen has the organs for digestion and reproduction. In female bees, the stingers are also in the abdomen. Male bees do not have stingers. In the abdomen of a female, there is a poinson canal, which holds the poison used to sting. The poison is not really poisonous unless you are allergic to it. When a bee stings a mammal, part of the stinger stays inside the victim, which causes the bee to die. On the overhead sheet, next to the word head, I will write "contains the sensory organs," next to the word thorax, write "hold the legs and wings," and next to the word abdomen, write "organs for digestion and reproduction." Tell the students that the important parts of a bee are the words written on the overhead, and that, although I will keep the sheet showing, they should write the words down anyway, for future reference. Continue on with lecture: ~Female worker bees: The majority of the bees we see are called female worker bees. (Write words on overhead). They have a lot of important jobs to do: they take care of the young bees, make honey, produce wax, cool the hive by fanning wings, gather and store pollen, nectar, and water. They also guard the hive, clean and repair the comb, and take care of the queen bee and drones. Worker bees only live 3 to 6 weeks because they work so hard. ~Drones are the male bees. They only make up about 5-10% of the bee community. If there was a class of 20 students, only 1 or 2 would be boys. They are larger than the worker bees and they do not have stingers. Their only job is to fertilize the queen so she can lay eggs. The worker bees take care of the drones until food runs out, at which point the worker bees bite off his wings and throw the drone out into the cold. Drones live about 3 to 6 months. ~There is only one queen bee. She is the largest bee in the colony. She does not have pollen baskets on her back legs. Her job is to lay eggs, and she can lay up to 2,000 each day! If she suspects that another queen bee has been hatched, the queen kills the young one. She can live up to 5 years. Explain to students about the bee's life cycle: A bee goes through metamorphosis, or life cycle) just like all other insects. There is an egg stage, which lasts about 4 days. For the following 5 days, it is in the larva stage. The pupa stage is next, which lasts about 16 days, in which the bee is capped in wax. Finally, the new bee is hatched, 21 days after the life cycle began. |
Practice: | Activity 1: After the lecture, the students should have knowledge about the 6 main parts of a bee: the head, the thorax, the abdomen, the wings, the legs, and the antenna. I will hand out a piece of manila paper to each student along with the pre-cut body parts of a bee, which are in an envelope all ready to be handed out. Students will be instructed to take out their glue sticks and follow along with me. On the over head, I will place the abdomen and give the instructions "take the largest oval and glue it down first." Then, we will glue the medium sized oval onto the first one, and the smallest oval onto the first, so that a bee shape appears. While I do this on the overhead, they will do this on their own paper. Complete the bee by taping the antenna on the head, the hind wing coming from the abdomen with the larger, fore wing on top of it also from the abdomen, and all three legs coming from the abdomen, with the largest ones with the pollen basket in the back. Activity 2: After all the students have glued their pieces onto the paper, I will ask them to hold up their paper so I can make sure they all understand correctly. Then, I will label each part on the overhead and instruct them to labels their own paper, reminding them to make sure they are placing the correct label on the part. Label: head, thorax, abdomen, antenna, hind wing, fore wing, legs, and pollen basket. Walk around while they are copying to make sure they are understanding and writing down the correct labels. Activity 3: Place the overhead of Activity sheet 2: Honey Bee Body Parts up. Hand out a dead bee and a magnifying glass to each student. Instruct them to look carefully at the dead bee using the magnifying glass. Tell them to try to identify the parts we just went over. If they need help, they can look up on the overhead. Activity 4: Have students take out their KWL charts. They should now fill in the last column, the L, what we learned, section, on there own. |
Accommodations: | -For studens with reading problems, I will read everything out loud during the development and the guided practice stage. -For students with writing problems, I will give them a pencil grip or allow them to write with a felt tip marker so they do not have to press so hard on the paper. -For studenst with behavior problems, I will assign them to be my helper for the lesson. They will be the ones to pass out each worksheet and will be in charge of turning the lights on or off when using the overhead. -For early mastery students, they will be able to go on-line and look up other interesting facts about bees. They are to provide 3-6 of these facts to be turned in. -For English language learners, I will use peer tutoring. |
Checking For Understanding: | Diagnostic-The students prior knowledge of bees will be assessed using the KWL chart done during the anticipatory set. Formative-Throughout the lesson, I will be monitoring students' progress in a few ways: making sure they are on task, walking around the room checking answers, and having them hold up their papers for me to check. If at any point they seem lost, I will go back and restate the information that they do not understand. Summative- I will collect the worksheet from their independent practice, working 14-2. I will then correct the worksheets to make sure everyone has understood the lesson. |
Closure: | When the students are finished looking at the dead bees, put up the overhead with the written terms on it that were part of the lecture. Ask for volunteers to read the terms that I point to, in order to reinforce the major parts of a bee. |
Evaluation: | |
Teacher Reflections: |
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