The students in Mrs. Rowland’s first grade classroom spent most of the month of November researching spiders. We painted spiders and webs. We created paper bag spiders (with some help). We learned the scientific names of the important body parts. And, we decided on six spiders we were really curious about and then were randomly placed in research teams. We used supportive websites collected and placed on our classroom website, our own books, library books, encyclopedias and videos. We used a data-recording sheet to answer four “burning questions.” What is the name of the spider? What is its habitat? What are some physical characteristics? What is its prey? We also found and saved good photos of our spiders. After collecting the data, we placed that information in a Word table. We used our Kidspiration Spider Web file to record our data in a visual way. We have six classroom computers and even though it was cozy each group was able to complete the activities. As a culminating activity we read Spiders (Scholastic “Time-to-Discover Readers,” 2002) by Melvin and Gilda Berger. We wrote an extension to this wonderful non-fiction book. Spiders is twelve-page collection of facts and photographs of our arachnid friends that uses a repeating format on several pages. On those pages it reads, “Some spiders…”. That is the format we used to record facts we have learned through our time researching spiders.

Some Spiders
By Mrs. Rowland’s First Graders

• Some spiders are camouflaged to match the flowers they are on.

• Some spiders are very dangerous to humans because they have venom.

 • Some spiders have a violin shape on their backs.

 • Some spiders are hairy.

 • Some spiders carry their spiderlings on their backs.

 • Some spiders lay 500 eggs in their egg sacs.

• Some spiders don’t spin webs.

 • Some spiders have marks or patterns on their bodies.

 • Some spiders are brown, or red, or yellow, or black, or some other colors.

• Some spiders swim and use air bubbles to make underwater nests

. • Some spiders build nests that have lids or “trap-doors."

 

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