Butterfly Life Cycle {Direct Instruction Lesson}

Spring and sprung! It’s time for learning about life cycles. I just posted my new Butterfly Life Cycle {Informational Text, Printables, Cut & Paste Booklet} download on TpT!

Here’s a FREE direct instruction lesson you can teach your students that accompanies my download on TpT. It’s a PDF file that you can use on your computer and play as a slide show. It’s good for 1st through 3rd grade classrooms. 🙂

Here’s the teaching plan:

Slide 1: The Hook or Anticipatory Set

This slide is just pictures of butterflies. Use it to set the scene for your students. You can talk about spring, nature, beauty, etc. Whatever you choose to discuss, link it back to butterflies and a butterfly’s life. You can also discuss patterns and changes that come into play during this Spring season. The choices are endless for your “hook.”

Slide 2: Objective

After grabbing your students’ attention, tell them what they’ll be able to accomplish through this lesson. Write the objective on the board and make sure students know that’s the point of the lesson.

Slide 3: Review

This is a quick slide to review something your students have learned before this lesson. Make sure the review is tied to something that is relevant to the life cycle of butterflies. For this lesson, I will quickly talk about patterns. If you need another type of review, email me and I will be happy to customize that ONE slide for you!

Slide 4: Big Idea

The Big Idea is the overarching idea. It answers that question, “why do we need to learn this?”

The big idea, in this case, is to understand how the cycle of life works. So, “good scientists know how the cycle of life works.”

Slides 5 through 11: Modeling

Use these slides to model. The slides contain a graphic organizer of cute clipart to model to students the four different stages of the life cycle. As you’re going through the slides, explain the pictures and the wording. Slide 5 has an overview of the cycle, and slide 11 will be a summary of the entire life cycle.

Slides 12 through 21: Check for Understanding

Use these slides to check your students’ understanding of the life cycle of a butterfly. Have them use their whiteboards to fill in the blanks as the slides pop-up onto the screen. The subsequent slide will have the answer. Be sure to check your students’ answers before showing them the answer on the board.

Slides 22 through 24: Closure

These last slides will close the lesson. They will ask your students to restate the objective, big idea, and an extension question.

Slide 25: Independent Practice

For this lesson, I listed my {Cut & Paste Booklet} as independent practice. Students can also use the informational sheet from my download for additional support.

Slide 26: Credits for Clipart and Fonts