Initially, students' observations and journal entries are superficial and missing detail about structure and behavior. They often described a larva as "cute" or described its behavior in human terms, for example, "it is tired, it's sleeping." Students do not usually include enough detail in their intial descriptions to support further investigation.

Overall goals for lessons:

• Lesson 1 . Students make extended observations of monarch behavior and generate questions that can be investigated.
  

  We provided students with extended 10-minute quiet observation periods several times a week. This gave them the time to notice caterpillar structures and behaviors, and write their observations. To encourage them to include clear detail, we collected their initial descriptions of caterpillars and asked them to draw what was being described by their list of descriptors. During this activity, they realized that the resulting drawings did not look at all like the caterpillars that were originally described. This activity highlighted the need for more detailed descriptions.

• Lesson 2 . Students observe, sketch, and label features of monarch larvae, chrysalis, and adult.
  

  Throughout the monarch life cycle, students make detailed sketches of larvae, chrysalis, and adults. This activity encourages careful observation and raises new questions about structure and change. For example, after making a series of observations, students asked "Why can't caterpillars hatch into butterflies?" and "What are they doing in their chrysalises?"

• Lesson 3 . Students learn about functions of features and how these differ at the different life stages.
  

  Students notice features of the larvae and how the features relate to behavior. For example, the students find that the larval prolegs are important for holding the larva on plants. Children observe the way the mandibles (mouthparts) move during feeding.

Lesson1: Students drawings and journal entries describe many of the changes in features and shape of the caterpillars as they develop. The entries generally provide more detail about appearance than about behavior. Children began descriptions with vague adjectives like "big yellow stripes." As they worked on their sketches, they discovered the need for vocabulary that would describe specific body parts and began to use measurements of size in their descriptions. Over time, observations became more detailed.

Student includes anatomical and behavioral observations in this journal entry.

Lesson2: When this activity started, students brainstormed questions not necessarily related to their observations. Over time, students' questions appeared to be more closely related to their observations and new knowledge of monarchs. For example, How do you tell the difference between a male and a female? How long does the caterpillar hang in a j-stage before going into a chrysalis?

Important features are shown in this sketch of a larva. Note the "insect" legs at the front of the larva, the four pairs of prolegs and the pair of claspers at the back of the larva.

Lesson3: Students generated questions which related behavior to anatomical features of the larvae. For example, Why do the younger caterpillars eat around where they are positioned on the leaf, compared to the older ones eating from the edge of the leaf back into the middle?