Biology and English?
Did you know?
- There are 200 million insects for every human on Earth.
- Insects destroy 10 – 15% of the world’s food supply each year.
- The number of insect species is believed to be between six and ten million.
- Only male crickets chirp.
- Ants leave trails and communicate with each other using pheromones as chemical signals.
Biology I students learned these facts and more during their study of classification and insects. Students began the school year learning how living things are classified. Putting this knowledge into practice, the students had to collect and identify 20 insects from at least 6 different orders. Besides the basic facts that insects have three tagmata, three pairs of legs, two pairs of wings and nine to eleven abdominal segments, students learned that beetles belong to the order Coleoptera , cicadas belong to the Homoptera order and dragonflies belong to the order Odonata.
Mrs. Z’s English 2 class incorporated this study into one of their writing assignments. The English students were asked to write a paragraph about their inset collecting experiences which will be used for a proofreading and editing exercise in the next nine weeks.
In their paragraphs, students shared the easiest and hardest insects to catch, their favorite part of the project and their least favorite part of the project. Students also shared things they wished they had done differently as well as advice for future insect collectors. Here are some of their reflections on the process:
“My favorite part of the project was identifying them because I didn’t really know bugs.”—Tayler Strickland
“I think the Bumble Bee was my best bug, because it was sort of dangerous to catch him.”-Nate Albers
“I love catching cicadas.”—Corban Hansen
“I caught the bugs by going up to bright lights.”—Aiden Cochran
“I wish I would’ve handled the bugs more carefully.”—Jacob Early
“My advice to future biology students is to collect many bugs, and collect them early. Then you have plenty of time and also a lot to choose from.”—Andrea Vierthaler
“My favorite part of the project was the collecting part.”—Devin Hargett
“I would tell future students to continuously work on the project.”—Annika Panek
“My advice for future students would be to start on the project fast. It isn’t smart to wait on the last minute to do all the work.”—Tim Patton
“My advice to future students is ‘don’t forget your bugs’.”—Chris Hansen