Emergent Writers Teaching Writing

Looking Closely: BUGS

Kid Writing Cycle 3

Back to Kid Writing

Suggested Materials:

  • Camera or phone
  • Computer with internet connectivity
  • Variety of found materials. Some ideas might include: cotton balls, pipe cleaners, leaves, empty water or soda bottles, plastic forks, twigs, felt, craft sticks, paper towel and toilet paper rolls, strips of paper, bottle caps, paint, wood scraps, tissue paper… and glue
  • Writing materials—paper, pencil or pen, etc.
  • Kidzone Spider Facts

Explore

If you want to get fancy, you can go on a bug scavenger hunt! (See: Bug Scavenger Hunt: FREE printable.) Otherwise, just take a walk inside or out and search for bugs. Students might be surprised how many places there are to find bugs! Take a walk, look for bugs crawling around the sidewalks, in the grass, or on flowers.

Once students find an insect, ask them to take a few minutes to examine the bug closely, and draw what they see. Notice the details—the eyes and legs and colors. Notice what it is sitting or standing or moving on.

Create

Part 1: Create Your Own Bug: using found items, from cotton balls to leaves, have students remix their bugs any way they like. If this lesson is leaning into science learning, click here for a helpful Bug Body Hack Fact Chart.  Five classifications of insects are listed on the chart: students can make any kind of insect they like ,or mix it up.  If this is more art or narrative writing, students can even build houses for their bug!

Part 2: Write a Six Word Story About Your BUG!  Ask students to take their bug on an adventure by writing about it in a poem, a story, or a drawing using only six words or images. Or, create a sign so people know the name of their bug, where the bug lives, and anything important to know about taking care of the bug in six words.

Check out Violet’s original composition about wanting to be a butterfly:

Extensions:

Think about the kind of house this bug would like to live in and draw a design for a bug house. It could be a house you could actually build or an imaginary play house for the bug and her family. See how to build a bug hotel…

Also…

Connect

Part of being a writer is sharing your work and ideas with others. Make sure that students get to share their creations and writing in class, at a larger school gathering or with family or friends.

Resources

Find books or poems about insects. Here are some we love:

This post is part of the Kid Writing collection.
Notes:

Modified from the work of our colleagues Kaytee Smith, Colin Brammer, Rebecca Bulvanoski, Jha’Mai Milindez, and Debra Pagona at the Tar River Writing Project.

Also Recommended

See all
Content type
Three Educators' Approaches to Educating for Democracy
By Erica Hodgin
Content type
COVID Poetry: How a New Genre is Helping Readers to Comprehend the Pandemic
By Marcello Giovanelli
Marcello Giovanelli, a Reader in Literary Linguistics at Aston University, has looked at the power of poetry to help a wide range of people in the UK, few of them poets, make sense of the pandemic. He wonders, is there a space for COVID poetry to play an important role in education as the pandemic wanes?
Read more
Content type
Wikipedia at 22
By Tamar Carroll and Lara Nicosia
Writing and editing Wikipedia entries is an excellent task for older writers who are pursuing specialized knowledge. In this piece, the authors describe a rationale and process for their college-aged writers to participate in Women's History Month by adding to and editing entries on women. The focus here is women's history and experience, but any topic where teachers want to invite writers to contribute to a public knowledge base is fair game.
Read more