Overview: This lesson on "Bugs" integrates listening skills, oral reading, descriptive writing, and art through student participation in text reading and a hands-on art project.
Learning Objectives: The learner will:
use prior knowledge of bugs to orally read text
use descriptive words to write a story
create bugs by cutting out a symmetrical form of their first name
make "Doodlebugs" from recipe.
Materials:
The Horrible Big Black Bug big book by Toni Jacquier (or similar book)
individual student books
crayons
pencils
chart paper
markers
dry erase board
ingredients for "doodlebugs" recipe (sugar cookies, gumdrops, licorice)
Procedure:
Pre-Activity
Read the big book The Horrible Big Black Bug to the students. Read the story a second time, encouraging students to locate and discuss descriptive words. Write the words on chart paper.
Activities
The students will help the teacher create a bubble map using descriptive words located in the story.
The group will take a nature walk around the school looking for places where bugs might be living.
The students will use descriptive words from the story to write stories about bugs.
The students will create bugs by folding an 8.5 x 11 sheet of white construction paper in half horizontally.
Have the students print their names (use the length of the paper). The teacher should draw a cutting line around each child's name.
Have students cut out their name shape leaving the fold intact.
The students will open their "bugs" and decorate with crayons, markers and finger paints.
The students will make antennae with pipe stems.
The students will make "Doodlebugs" by decorating a sugar cookie with icing using gumdrops to form the head and licorice for the legs and spots.
Teacher Comments: This lesson works well with early literacy groups consisting of five to six 6 first grade students. I used the "Buggy Bunch" as a bulletin board and display student work. This lesson integrates reading, listening, writing and art.
