Description
What our Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars 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 interesting 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.
SPICEBUSH SWALLOWTAIL CATERPILLARS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
The Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars lesson plan contains three content pages. Spicebush caterpillars are a type of caterpillar found in eastern North America and Canada, mainly in wooded areas and gardens. As they mature through metamorphosis, the spicebush caterpillar becomes the spicebush swallowtail. Swallowtails are a type of butterfly known for their large dark wings with colorful patterns at the bottom.
While in this caterpillar stage, they shed their skin five times as they grow. Each stage is called an instar. In the first three stages, the insect is small, dark green, and white, growing each time it sheds its skin. In the fourth and fifth stage, the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar changes color. It turns bright green or yellow with dark black spots on its head. It also has some blue spots and a pink bottom half down its back.
Spicebush caterpillars are nocturnal. They hide “inside” during the day when it is shedding its skin, then come out at night to eat. They create a safe shelter during the day to protect from predators. To do so, the caterpillar creates silk threads on both sides of a leaf, and as the silk dries, it pulls the leaf closed around it, creating a camouflaged shelter that looks like a rolled leaf.
Diet of the Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar
These colorful insects are picky eaters. They mostly like to eat leaves from a few special plants. Their favorite plant is the spicebush, which—of course—is where they get their name. The spicebush has soft, green leaves that give the caterpillars plenty of nutrients to grow big and strong.
In addition to spicebush leaves, these caterpillars also enjoy sassafras leaves. Did you know that root beer gets its sweet flavor from sassafras leaves and the root bark? While modern root beer uses artificial flavorings, the original recipe relied on sassafras root for its distinctive taste. If you crush a sassafras leaf and stem, it will likely smell like root beer! No wonder caterpillars are attracted to it. Sassafras is another plant that grows in the same forests and gardens where spicebush caterpillars live. Sometimes, they also eat leaves from the sweet bay and tulip trees. These plants all have easy leaves for the caterpillars to chew and digest.
A spicebush swallowtail caterpillar may spend its entire life on just one or two plants, known as a host plant. The insects hatch from eggs laid on that plant and create a leaf shelter there, eating leaf after leaf as they grow bigger and stronger. Because they only eat a few types of plants, they depend on these plants to survive.
Other Interesting Facts
Spicebush caterpillars are like tiny magicians. To protect themselves, they use some clever tricks. When young, they look like bird droppings, which keeps birds from eating them because the birds don’t want to eat their own droppings! As they grow, the caterpillars change colors to bright green or yellow and get dark spots on their heads that look like snake eyes. These “false eyes” scare away predators by making the caterpillar look like a small snake. If the caterpillar feels scared, it curls its head down and lifts its “snakehead” to make the trick even more real!
That’s not all its tricks to keep predators away! When it feels threatened, a strange, orange, forked organ can pop out from behind its head. This organ is called an osmeterium, and it smells terrible! The osmeterium’s foul odor and the insect’s general odd appearance scare away predators. Many spicebush swallowtail caterpillars have a red osmeterium, which looks like a snake’s tongue and makes their disguise even better.
One interesting thing about the spicebush caterpillar is how it changes depending on the season. As it prepares for its metamorphosis, it forms a chrysalis. The hard shell protects it as it transforms into a butterfly. The chrysalis looks like a curled-up leaf. If the caterpillar makes its chrysalis in the spring or summer, it’s usually green to blend in with the green leaves. But if it’s later in the season, in fall or winter, and the caterpillar has to spend the winter in its chrysalis, it turns brown to look like a dead leaf.
Why Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars Are Important
These interesting caterpillars are an essential part of the food chain. Many animals, including birds, spiders, dragonflies, and wasps, prey on spicebush swallowtail caterpillars. Although the caterpillar has innovative ways to protect itself, it still helps feed other animals. Some animals might have trouble finding enough to eat without caterpillars like these. That could throw off the balance of the whole ecosystem.
When they become spicebush swallowtail butterflies, they visit flowers to drink nectar. As they fly from flower to flower, the beautiful butterflies help spread pollen. This process is called pollination, and it helps plants grow and make seeds. So, even though they start small, spicebush swallowtail caterpillars play a significant role in helping plants, animals, and the environment stay healthy and connected.
SPICEBUSH SWALLOWTAIL CATERPILLARS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillars 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.
MOLTING PROCESS ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For this activity, students will research the spicebush swallowtail to discover its full molting process. Then they will draw and color each stage in the boxes on the worksheet page.
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.
