"Flippin" the Butterfly Life Cycle

Introduction:
Teacher will check out flip cams to families for a weekend. The idea is that the students will work with their families to capture butterflies in the wild. These videos will be shared with the class as an introduction to the butterfly unit and also later used to create a cumulative video diary.

Weeks 1-3 (Live Butterfly Habitat):
After watching some of the videos students created. The class will begin the butterfly unit. Teacher will start with a K-W-L on butterflies that will remain posted for the duration of the unit.
In the first few days, teacher will bring in a butterfly habitat with live larvae. Each student will be assigned a day to be the video scientist. On their day, it will be their job to video tape the habitat and note any observations and/or changes that have occurred within the butterfly life cycle. This will continue as the butterfly goes through the entire metamorphic process.

Accumulative Unit Video Diary:
•Throughout the unit, the students will be writing descriptive paragraphs about butterflies. As students finish their paragraph, they will video tape reading their essay; this will later be used in the unit video.

•Teacher video tapes each process of unit. (What are the students doing?) Students will later watch this back and write a first, next, last paragraph about what they did during the butterfly unit.

•Parents will volunteer to edit all footage captured in each part of the unit. Students will watch their video diary and have a copy to take home.