Set up a learning centre. Collect pictures, books, photos, and magazines of different kinds of spiders. Include magnifying glasses to observe spiders in a vivarium. Display a vocabulary chart and add to throughout the unit, eg. life cycle, egg sac, ballooning, spiderlings, food chain, vivarium, web, silk.
Teacher discussion with students "Have you ever wondered how or why something happens?" Reference site: Fun insect facts for kids
Together, as a class, list student ideas for discussion/explanation.
Choose six or seven ideas from the list. Each group brainstorms and writes their own explanations (a fun activity where all explanations are accepted). Return to the class group and share ideas to explain how/why.
Bookmark a suitable site to enable close reading of an explanation. (see Exploring Language - Looking at Written Language: a Framework). Discuss and model the writing of a
summary (RTF 5KB)
. Students work with a partner to select one of the bookmarked sites to read and discuss the explanation. Write a summary and share the explanation orally with the class.
Published on: 26 May 2009
