Description
What our Mosquitoes lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Mosquitoes is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. In addition, they will learn about the habitat, diet, and behaviors of these unique insects. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The paragraph on this page provides a little more information or guidance on what to expect from the lesson. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. You can use the blank lines to record any thoughts or ideas you have as you prepare.
MOSQUITOES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
The Mosquitoes lesson plan contains two content pages. Mosquitoes are small insects with long legs, thin bodies, and two wings. They have a long, thin, special mouthpart called a proboscis that they use to suck liquids like nectar or blood. Most are only about a quarter inch long and are very light, so they can fly easily. Mosquitoes live in warm, wet places all over the world. They are often found near ponds, marshes, and puddles because they lay their eggs in still water.
Unlike bees or ants, which live in big colonies, mosquitoes don’t live together. But they gather in the same area because they like the same conditions. Scientists call these loose gatherings aggregations. Male mosquitoes usually stay near plants and feed on nectar, while the females fly around looking for animals or people so they can get the blood they need to produce eggs. Sometimes, you might see a bunch of mosquitoes buzzing around in the same spot. That’s a group looking for food or a good place to lay eggs.
These small insects do not care for their young the way many animals do. Instead, female mosquitoes lay their eggs on or near water and then leave. The eggs hatch into larvae, tiny worm-like creatures living in the water. These larvae are also called wigglers because of how they move. After several stages, the larvae become pupae and then adult mosquitoes. Even though mosquito parents don’t protect their babies, the water in which they are born helps them grow safely until they can fly.
What They Eat
Most mosquitoes eat nectar from flowers, just like bees and butterflies. Both the males and females drink nectar for energy. But female mosquitoes also need something special to make eggs—blood. They drink blood from animals like birds, frogs, and people. This doesn’t mean they are trying to hurt you. They need the proteins and iron in the blood to help their eggs grow.
Female mosquitoes use their senses to find prey. They can smell the carbon dioxide that people and animals breathe and are attracted to body heat and sweat. Once they get close, they land on the skin and use their proboscis to poke through the skin and suck blood. Their saliva has chemicals that keep the blood from clotting while they drink. That’s why mosquito bites can make you itchy. It’s your body reacting to the insect’s saliva!
Other Interesting Facts
Mosquitoes have been around for more than 100 million years! That means they lived during the time of the dinosaurs. Scientists have found fossils of mosquitoes trapped in tree sap, called amber, that show what ancient mosquitoes looked like. Even though they are tiny, they have survived many changes on Earth because they are very good at adapting to new environments.
Even though they are small and light, mosquitoes are excellent flyers. They can flap their wings around 600 times per second, which makes the high-pitched buzz-buzz sound you hear when they are close. They are also very good at flying through tiny spaces and around obstacles. Some species can fly up to two miles for food or water. Their fast, flexible flying helps them escape predators like birds, frogs, and dragonflies.
Some mosquitoes carry tiny parasites or viruses that can make people or animals sick. When a mosquito bites, it can pass these germs into the bloodstream of its prey. One example is malaria, a disease caused by a parasite and spread by a particular mosquito. Not all mosquitoes carry diseases, though. Scientists study these insects to learn how to keep people safe and stop the bugs from spreading harmful germs.
Why Mosquitoes Are Important
Even though mosquitoes can be annoying, they are essential for the environment. Many animals, such as birds, bats, frogs, and fish, eat mosquito larvae and adults as part of their diet. Plus, mosquitoes are pollinators because they drink nectar from flowers and help plants grow by spreading pollen. This makes them a small but helpful part of the food web and the life cycle of many plants and animals.
Most mosquito species are not endangered. There are over 3,500 different kinds of mosquitoes in the world! Some scientists even try to reduce their populations in places where they spread dangerous diseases. However, because the bugs play a role in nature, scientists are careful not to harm the environment when they study or control them.
MOSQUITOES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Mosquitoes lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a practice worksheet. Each one will help students solidify their grasp of the material they learned throughout the lesson. You can refer to the classroom procedure guidelines to know when to hand out each worksheet.
MOSQUITO MODEL ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will create models of mosquitoes by using the supplies you provide and following the steps on the worksheet.
REVIEW PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet lists 10 questions based on the content. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
At the end of the lesson plan document is an answer key for the practice worksheet. The correct answers are all in red to make it easier for you to compare them with students’ responses. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
