Description

What our Animal Life Cycles Introduction lesson plan includes

Lesson Objectives and Overview: Animal Life Cycles Introduction teaches students about the process by which various animals grow. Students will explore various life cycles for different types of animals. They will learn how life cycles for animals differ for other species. This lesson is for students in 2nd grade and 3rd grade.

Classroom Procedure

Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. For this lesson, you will need construction paper. Students will also need internet access for a portion of the lesson. What you need for the activity includes dish gloves, scrap paper, beads, tissue paper, and other craft materials.

Options for Lesson

Teacher Notes

The teacher notes page provides an extra paragraph of information to help guide the lesson and remind you what to focus on. The blank lines on this page are available for you to write out thoughts and ideas you have as you prepare the lesson.

ANIMAL LIFE CYCLES INTRODUCTION LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES

What Is a Life Cycle?

The Animal Life Cycles Introduction lesson plan contains a total of two content pages. A life cycle is a series of stages that describes how a living thing develops, lives, and dies. Every animal goes through a life cycle, beginning with birth, then changing to an adult, and eventually ending with death. Each generation goes through these changes. When each series of stages is complete, it is called a life cycle.

There are diagrams that show life cycles to represent the six major animal groups: insects, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals. Life cycles repeat over and over again. For this reason, you could also call this concept the circle of life. Seeing the pattern in a circle can help us understand that the life cycle repeats itself over and over again.

Insects and most amphibians change quite a lot throughout their life cycles. They go through a process called metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is a significant change in the body form of an animal during its life cycle. Sometimes there are three basic stages (called incomplete metamorphosis), but most of the time there are four (complete metamorphosis).

Metamorphosis

To demonstrate what metamorphosis looks like in different animals, the lesson gives three examples. An adult grasshopper lays eggs in the soil. Young grasshoppers, called nymphs, hatch from the eggs. As a nymph grows, it sheds its outer body covering several times before becoming an adult. It goes through incomplete metamorphosis: egg, nymph, and adult.

Adult butterflies lay their eggs on leaves. From each egg, a caterpillar hatches and starts to eat, and eat, and eat. The caterpillar then forms a chrysalis. An adult emerges from the chrysalis as an adult butterfly. It experiences complete metamorphosis: egg, caterpillar (larva), chrysalis (pupa), and adult.

And just like many insects, most amphibians look entirely different at each stage of their lives. Only a few species don’t go through metamorphosis. Most frogs, for instance, lay eggs that hatch into tadpoles. The tadpoles develop into froglets, and froglets grow into adult frogs. So they go through complete metamorphosis: egg, tadpole, froglet, and adult frog.

Egg-laying and Live Births

Reptiles, fish, birds, and mammals don’t go through metamorphosis. Reptiles, fish, and birds lay eggs, and mammals generally have live births. Because of this, these baby animals don’t look all that different from their parents.

For example, a baby fish is clearly a fish. Hatchling turtles look like miniature versions of adult turtles. Ducklings look similar to adult ducks right after they hatch, too. And human babies look like adults, only smaller and less hairy. While their life cycles might be different, all animals go through the continuous circle of life.

ANIMAL LIFE CYCLES INTRODUCTION LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS

The Animal Life Cycles Introduction lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. Each one will reinforce students’ comprehension of lesson material in different ways and help them demonstrate when they learned. Use the guidelines on the classroom procedure page to determine when to distribute each worksheet to the class.

LIFE CYCLE GLOVES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET

Using the materials you provide, students will follow the steps on the page to create a life cycle glove for a specific animal. They will first choose and animal and research its life cycle. Then they will illustrate the fingers of their gloves in a way that represents each stage of the cycle.

ANIMAL LIFE CYCLES INTRODUCTION PRACTICE WORKSHEET

For the practice, students will look at two diagrams. One is of the life cycle of a frog, and the other is of a life cycle of a chicken. Students must correctly label which stage is which on the diagrams.

MY FAVORITE ANIMAL HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

The homework assignment requires students to pick their favorite animal. They will research the animal, write three fun facts about it, and draw out their life cycle in the box on the page.

Worksheet Answer Keys

There is an answer key for the practice worksheet at the end of this lesson plan. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits this page. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep this as reference for yourself when grading assignments.