Lesson Idea | Magical Metamorphosis: Butterfly Life Cycle Stories

Students explore the life cycle of a butterfly as they write and illustrate stories that show the stages of a butterfly’s metamorphosis.

Task

Most young children are familiar with butterflies and caterpillars and love to listen to stories about them, whether they are printed and found in the library or listened to online or using an iPad or tablet.

As budding scientists and authors, tell the students in your class that they are going to write and illustrate their own butterfly stories to teach younger students about the life cycle of a butterfly and get them excited about reading.

Engage

Ask students to indicate if they have all seen a butterfly and prompt them to describe what that butterfly looked like. Most will describe a butterfly in its adult stage.

Ask students if they have ever seen a caterpillar. Is that a butterfly? What about a chrysalis? Ask them to share what they think based on prior knowledge. While they may know that a caterpillar will eventually turn into a butterfly, you may also want to challenge them to share how they could prove this information through scientific observation or experimentation.

Read a story that includes the various stages of a butterfly’s life cycle, such as the perennial favorite, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. After reading, work as a class to identify the four stages of butterfly’s life cycle - eggs, caterpillar/larva, chrysalis/pupa, and adult.

As a group, brainstorm other ways a caterpillar might feel, such as sad, happy, scared, angry, jealous, or brave. You might want to use an idea cluster or character traits organizer. Might a butterfly’s or caterpillar’s feelings change at different stages of their life cycle?

If you want to evaluate student understanding before they begin writing, have them complete a butterfly life cycle organizer.

Create

Tell your young scientists and authors that they are going to write and illustrate their own butterfly life cycle stories! Go back and reread the list of feelings the class thought a butterfly or caterpillar could have. Have students choose one feeling to describe the main character in their story.

Share a character/setting/events organizer with each student. Have them write the feeling in the top of the character box. Students can then brainstorm ideas for setting and events. Remind students that events in their story need to make sense with the changes (events) in the butterfly’s life cycle.

Give the students a blank 4-stage cycle diagram to organizer their writing. Students can refer to the cycle diagram you created as a class or on their own to make sure they write about the stages correctly.

As students think about what might happen in their story, have them write words and simple ideas next to the boxes on the cycle diagram to describe what happens to their character during each stage of metamorphosis.

Let students know that their book will need to have at least one page for each stage in the life cycle. Have students develop a first draft of their story.

Ask students to read their rough draft three times and answer the following questions:
1. Did I make each stage of life cycle of the butterfly clear?
2. Will a reader like my story? Why?
3. What pictures can I add to help tell the story?

Give students time to make edits to their rough draft. Students should also indicate which sentences will be on each page.

Next, have students use Wixie to design the final book. You can use the booklet template, create your own template, or simply show students how to add pages and text objects.

When sentences have been added to each page, have the students use the Paint tools to create illustrations for each page. You can show them how to use the Stickers as well if you want to save time during the illustration process.

If you are sharing the books in digital format, have students narrate the text on each page of the story. If you have lots of students working in a lab, you may want to use headset microphones to cut down on extra noise. You could also have students work on their narration at a center in your classroom set up for this purpose.

As they record, listen, and rerecord they gain valuable practice with reading fluency. The final product can also serve as an example of their fluency.

If you are publishing hard copies, have students click the Print button and choose how they want to share the story. If you are going to bind the pages into a book, then full size will work great. If you want to save paper or colored ink, you can also print at postcard size (4 to a page) and have students cut before binding.

If you are going share the books in digital form, have students use the Projects button to export the project to HTML, PDF, or video.


For more information about the lesson idea, please visit Creative Educator website.