Science Lesson Plan 6: Arthropods
Curriculum Outcome: DL6.3 Analyze the characteristics and behaviours of vertebrates
(i.e., mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and invertebrates.
Objectives: Students will compare the characteristics of different kinds of arthropods and
examine the similarities and differences between them.
Warm Up: Get students to answer the following questions from the board. Why do you
think Arthropods have exoskeletons? Why don’t we have exoskeletons?
Materials Needed:
If possible have the following specimens in a jar for the students to observe:
Spider, Crayfish, Butterfly, Bee, Beetle, Grasshopper, Mosquitoes. (If unable to gather
live specimens, allow groups access to computers or books on the animals)
Procedure:
1. Divide the class into seven groups. Each group will be responsible for one of the
following arthropods: spiders, crayfish, butterflies, bees, beetles, grasshoppers, or
mosquitoes
2. Allow groups to observe or research their assigned animal.
3. Ensure that the groups list every thing they observe about the animal on paper.
(Students should be looking for things like how it moves, how many of each body
part does it have etc.)
4. After 10-15 minutes (time depends on if they are observing or researching the
animal) have all students gather together to share their observation lists with the
other groups.
5. While students are sharing ask them questions that will prompt them to think
about similarities and differences such as: All these different animals are in one
group called arthropods. What characteristics do you think arthropods have in
common? Encourage the students to refer back to the lists they made when
thinking about the question. After students have shared their answers you can ask
them, Since there are so many different arthropods, can we subdivide them into
smaller groups? In what ways are these animals different from one another?
Have students refer to their lists again.
6. After we have finished our class discussion, hand out the Similarities and
differences sheet attached below, and have the students list the similarities and
differences between the given animals.
Engage/ Explore: Students observing and researching their assigned arthropod.
Explain: Students are able to answer questions based off their observations of their
assigned arthropod.
Evaluate: Students will be able to fill out the similarities and differences hand out.
Arthropod Battle!
Name:
Date:
List the similarities and differences that you can think of for each of arthropods listed:
Butterfly vs Ant
Similarities
Differences
Spider vs Crab
Similarities
Differences
Teacher Notes:
What is an arthropod? An arthropod is an invertebrate animal whose body consists of
an exoskeleton. There are three subgroups of arthropods: insects, arachnids, crustaceans.
Why do Arthropods have exoskeletons? Arthropods have exoskeletons to support and
protect their bodies. Exo means outside, so their skeletons are on the outside of their
body, while humans have their skeletons on the inside of our bodies.
What characteristics do you think arthropods have in common? Students may come up
with a lot of common characteristics such as the amount of legs some have, wings etc.
But one of the most important ones is the fact that they all have exoskeletons.
In what ways are these animals different from one another? For this question there
many answers that the students can come up with because there are many differences
between them. One example would be the amount of legs they have i.e. Centipede >30
legs, Crayfish>10 legs, Spider>8 legs, etc.
Invertebrates
Soft Body Parts
Worms
Porifera (Sponge)
Mollusks
Hard Skin Covering
Cnidarians
Arthropods
Echinoderms