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Teaching activity – Yucky bugs

This level 1 – 4 resource illustrates how these videos from the Department of Conservation website could support students to strengthen their capability to engage with science.

Two hands holding a pile of soil and worms.

Tags

  • AudienceKaiako
  • Curriculum Level1234
  • Resource LanguageEnglish

About this resource

These videos from the Department of Conservation explore how bugs play a vital role in keeping the balance in nature. The supporting learning activities for NZC levels 1 – 4 can support students to engage emotionally as well as cognitively with the natural world. 

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Teaching activity: Yucky bugs 

Mātauranga Māori 

"Te aitanga pepeke" (the insect world) refers to a wide range of insects and creatures in the Māori world. They share certain features:

  • They have four or more legs.
  • They sit in a crouching position.
  • Some can leap or jump.

Te aitanga pepeke feature in the narrative of Whiro who sent an army of small creatures to kill Tāne to obtain the three baskets of whatukura (sacred knowledge). See Te Ara’s Te atitanga pepeke – The insect world for more.

Learning focus

Students engage emotionally as well as cognitively with the natural world.

Learning activity

The big picture and Yucky bugs are good for us.

Students watch the video of "Yucky bugs". This video has the potential to engage students emotionally as it shows bugs as both fascinating and fearful. The presenter is enthusiastic and full of energy – he is obviously fascinated by the bugs himself.

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Provide students with opportunities to talk about the video. For example:

  • What were the “yucky” things?
  • What were some of the amazing things they found out?
  • Were there any bugs that they could describe as beautiful?
  • Are there any bugs that they now feel more positively about?
  • What are some of the “good things” bugs do?

After watching and discussing the video take the children outside on a hunt for as many different bugs as they can find. Encourage students to choose one bug and observe it closely and carefully for an extended period of time. Ask:

  • What does it look like?
  • How does it move?
  • Does it make any sound?
  • Does it have a smell?

As a follow up activity students could choose a bug and find out as much about it as they can from a range of sources. Students then present their bug to the class and make a case for why it is a really special creature that needs looking after.

Supporting students to become scientifically literate, that is, to participate as critical, informed, and responsible citizens in a society in which science plays a significant role is the purpose of science in The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum. If citizens are to be able to engage critically with science, they need a functional knowledge of science.  It is not enough to be able to say what science is and what its strengths and weaknesses are, citizens need to be ready, willing and able to use this knowledge. This resource focuses on these “dispositional” aspects of the capabilities. Students are gathering and collecting data, using and critiquing evidence and representing their ideas about science but the focus is on engaging emotionally as well as cognitively.

A number of theorists argue that the experiences children have with nature during middle childhood are significant for the development of lifelong ecological understanding.

“One’s knowledge about ecological processes and principles is made meaningful and personal by an emotional attachment to the natural world.” - Judson, 2010

What are we looking for?

Are students excited by the activities?

Do they ask curious questions?

Are they developing a sense of the inter-connectedness of different life forms, including humans?

A huge range of activities could be used to encourage students to engage emotionally, as well as cognitively. Story telling is a powerful technique. Extended experiential learning episodes such as camps and repeated field trips to a local stream, park, beach or bush area can also foster positive attitudes to the natural world.

The virtual field trips run by LEARNZ also have the potential to engage students’ imaginations especially if the class has an “ambassador” on the field trip.