In this activity, students write a formal introduction for an insect species of their choice, including information about the insect’s relationship to other animals and also the land. This is designed to help them think about how the Linnaean classification system works.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
- discuss how simple classification works and why it’s useful
- carry out research to find out more about an insect
- present their mihi to the rest of the class.
Download the Word file for:
- introduction/background notes
- what you need
- what to do
- student instructions.
Related content
Explore What’s so special about insects?, Insects – physical characteristics and Aquatic insect life to find out more about insects.
Discover the wide range of our resources on insects, or explore the range of content under our invertebrates topic.
In the Connected article City of bugs, students teamed up with a scientist to find out which ecosystem in their city had the most invertebrates.
Use iNaturalist to help identify insects. Find out more how to use this citizen science project in your teaching.
Learn about bringing insects into your classroom in our PLD webinar All about insects featuring entomologists Dr Chrissie Painting and Tom Saunders.
Classification
Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research has a huge collection of insects. Find out more on naming species and classification systems used.
Activity ideas
Identifying bugs – with Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research’s easy-to-use web pages.
Moths – learn how to collect moths and how to rear them to observe their life cycle. Watch a video on rearing moths and then write a ‘how to’ guide in Rearing insects.
Observation: learning to see uses images of frogs to help students gain observation and inference skills – adapt this for insects.
Useful links
What is this bug? from Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research is a handy guide to common invertebrates of New Zealand.
Research your insect on Wikipedia.
