Learn about one town's conflict over the issue of spraying pesticides to combat disease-carrying insects, in this video segment from Greater Boston.
Material Type: Lesson
Travel underground for an up-close look at the ants, amoebas, and bacteria that maintain healthy soil.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Despite being often feared, spiders are mysterious and intriguing, offering a useful foundation for the effective teaching and learning of scientific concepts and processes. In order to provide an entryway for teachers and students—as well as scientists themselves—into the biology of spiders, we compiled a list of 99 record breaking achievements by spiders (the “Spider World Records”). We chose a world-record style format, as this is known to be an effective way to intrigue readers of all ages. We highlighted, for example, the largest and smallest spiders, the largest prey eaten, the fastest runners, the highest fliers, the species with the longest sperm, the most venomous species, and many more. We hope that our compilation will inspire science educators to embrace the biology of spiders as a resource that engages students in science learning. By making these achievements accessible to non-arachnologists and arachnologists alike, we suggest that they could be used: (i) by educators to draw in students for science education, (ii) to highlight gaps in current organismal knowledge, and (iii) to suggest novel avenues for future research efforts. Our contribution is not meant to be comprehensive, but aims to raise public awareness on spiders, while also providing an initial database of their record breaking achievements.
Material Type: Primary Source
Insects are an excellent resource for science education. Many insects are easily maintained in the classroom and can happily thrive despite being handled and kept in captivity. The remarkable diversity in form and function of commonly found insects promotes interest and enthusiasm in observing the natural world. Insects can also be used to model a variety of scientific principles. The objectives of this page are to give educators basic information about insects and ideas on how to use insects in the classroom.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
The January 2012 issue of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases presented an Editorial, a Viewpoint, and two accompanying Expert Commentaries that focussed on the application of genetically modified (GM) insects for control of animal and plant diseases. These articles describe the technological advances these tools represent, the regulatory framework, and the societal dialogue that is necessary for their wide-scale application for disease control. Here, we have assembled a collection of articles published in the PLOS journals that describe the technical and applied aspects of GM insects. We also included articles that are not strictly GM, but aim to modify the disease transmission traits of insects through the use of symbiotic microbes.
Material Type: Data Set, Primary Source
This lesson shows children that insects have different kinds of mouths. It also notes the kinds of foods that different insects eat. It is a hands-on experiment type of lesson in which the children act as insects and use different tools for their "mouths."
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Corn rootworm can cause devastating effects to corn yields. The focus of this lesson is the ongoing research of scientists as they work to combat the resistance of Corn rootworm to control measures. The importance of this research in developing Insect Resistance Management strategies is discussed.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
It's a natural reaction to be frightened of some insects. Many insects have the ability to harm people, and many insects look very menacing. However, many large insects are not harmful at all. Because it would take several volumes to describe every insect, this publication is intended to distinguish several common insects and insect relatives in Kentucky that are or are not harmful.
Material Type: Reading
Step outside and discover the diversity of insect life in your neighborhood. Insects are the world’s most diverse group of living things, with over 950,000 identified species and counting. You might think that you’d need to travel to the Amazon to study insects, but they can be found practically everywhere—including right where you happen to be.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Bug-go is designed to help the players learn to identify some insects while learning which insects are beneficial and interesting facts about others. The game should be played similar to the game bingo.
Material Type: Game
Students learn to identify several beneficial insects and spiders, including predators and pollinators, then record numbers and types of beneficial insects and spiders that they discover in the outdoors, and discuss ways that the insects and spiders that they observed are adapted to be pollinators or predators.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
In this video segment from Garden Insects, learn about six varieties of spiders that live in one garden.
Material Type: Lecture
This video segment from NOVA: "The Mystery of Animal Pathfinders" explores the migratorial exploits of monarch butterflies.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Every living thing must be able to reproduce and make offspring. Most of us are familiar with how humans and mammals make babies, but do all creatures reproduce in the same way? Do insects, like the beetle, give birth to little insects? Also in: French | Spanish
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Lesson Plan
As you watch a butterfly navigate the flowers in your back yard, or a pesky fly avoid your flyswatter, keep in mind their vision is quite different than yours and mine.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Lesson Plan
Students will read and observer ants to discover how ants are the same and different than people.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
There are several different ways to get ants for an ant farm, depending on when you would like to start the farm and how long you would like for your ant farm to last.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Lesson Plan
Thousands of orange and black shapes flutter through the trees. Welcome to one of the few wintering homes of the monarch butterfly. Also in: Spanish
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Game, Lesson Plan
This video segment from Wild TV takes a closer look at backyard bugs, their habitat and characteristics.
Material Type: Lecture
Without the work of decomposers, living organisms would eventually use up all the raw materials in the environment, and dead organisms and wastes would pile up. This video segment from Interactive NOVA: "Earth" describes the role of decomposers as the earth's great recyclers.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
