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| A very beautiful but very agitated wolf spider.......I soon released him so that he could resume normal life...hunting and eating small prey.....and looking for the right mate. |
The story of Benji and the Spidernaut
John
Paull 1969
Background:- In 1969, when working with David Hawkins at The Mountain View Center for Environmental Education, at the University
of Colorado in Boulder, I visited a number of elementary schools in
Boulder School District. At the time of the first landing on the moon, I
was spending at least one day a week in the second grade
classroom at Lincoln School.
- The Apollo 11 mission was the first human spaceflight to land on the Moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above.The mission fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
Lincoln Elementary School reminds me of the best of English schools. Every time I went I saw children
working individually or in groups, alone or with a teacher. They were reading,
writing, constructing with blocks, cooking, painting, exploring science or
mathematical materials, watching animals in a terrarium, making electrical
circuits to light bulbs for a building, making paper airplanes – and much more.
The two
teachers, Jeanne and Patti, thought very carefully about the mechanics of
running their classroom, just one part of a teacher’s job. They knew their
students, they trusted and respected them and they expected them to learn.
Jeanne and Patti spent time before and after school preparing the room
for each and every day. They used materials creatively, feeding off the
excitement that was generated when teachers and children work well together –
in short, everything that made all the hard organizational tasks worthwhile.
I came to
observe, to learn and to interact with the kids and the teachers.
One afternoon when I was working with a group of kids, one of them
spotted a spider walking across the carpet. I picked it up and held it safely
in my hand.
The kids were fascinated. They asked a thousand questions. “What is it? Where does it live? Can we touch
it?” We put the spider into a jar
and talked about making a ‘real’ home for it. The questions continued. “What did it need? Where would it sleep? Did
it need a friend? How and what does it drink?”
There was
an old bookcase in the corridor that no one seemed to want, so, that evening, Patti,
Jeanne and I took it apart. We took out the shelves, lined the inside with
plastic sheeting, added soil, plants and a light, screwed a huge sheet of
Perspex to the front, and, hey, there was the most beautiful spider home for our spider you
can imagine
When the kids came in the next day, they were SO excited.
The excitement grew when the spider, now named Willie, built her first
web.
Man on the Moon
On July 16th, the
Apollo mission was launched and was televised live. We watched its launch in
school.
A few days later (July 20th) we watched the moon-landing.
There was such excitement as the astronaut bounced around on the surface of the
moon. The kids were absolutely spellbound.
One student, 8 year old Benji, was so taken up
with the landing on the moon that he constructed a large rocket from boxes,
with perfectly fitting nosecone.
He was soon joined by another lad who wanted to build a Russian Rocket,
hearing that the Russians, too, were thinking of launching a rocket to the moon
(his family was from Russia, I believe).
Eventually, they decided to
combine their talents and work together to build the BEST rocket.
When the
rocket was close to being finished, the boys came to me and asked if they could
fly a living creature in their rocket. We talked about it and asked the class.
Everyone agreed we should fly Willie, our classroom spider, providing that
there was no possibility we would hurt her.
Another question, for me, in particular, was HOW could we fly a huge
cardboard box rocket? Robin Hood provided the answer! We would launch our
rocket in the same way an arrow is launched from a bow!
Outside the classroom were two big trees – we could launch our rocket by
sitting it on a length of rubber suspended between the trees.
Willie
the Spider successfully completed her training, was carefully placed in her
matchbox (lined with soft felt and a moth for dinner) container, placed in the
nosecone, and was subsequently launched in the rocket at 4:00 p.m. on July
20th. A crowd of forty plus children cheered as the rocket took off, headed
toward the late afternoon sun. The
rocket 'flew' to a height of, say, two feet, tumbled, and fell to the ground.
The crowd applauded, then went quiet. “Willie!! Where's Willie?“ they shrieked.
Benji ran to the fallen rocket,
took off the nosecone and removed the matchbox, and shouted,
"Willie's alive!" The crowd went wild.
After the rescue, Willie the Orb Spider, and, for a minute or two, the Astrospider,
was retired to the huge (and very appropriately designed) spider container
in the back of the classroom.
After the children were satisfied that the home was just right for the spider, we gathered around in a circle on the carpet, and we
wrote Willie’s story on a large sheet of paper and hung it on the wall.
The Poster
We knew where to get a spider to send up in
our rocket.
We found the spider and we named him Willie.
We put him through lots of tests, seeing how much roughness he could take, the
heat test, and the falling test. Willie passed all the tests and he we sent him
up in the rocket.
It tumbled in the air and fell down.
And he was alive.
Willie then went back in
his home and lived a long time.
The following day, I helped Benji write to NASA. He described his
rocket launching experience and asked:
Dear Nasa and dear astronauts,
We launched a spider into space.
WHY don't
you launch a spider into space? We did!!
We can show you how to do it!!
Love, Benji.
We never
got a reply.
When I went
back to England, I celebrated the launching of Willie the spider, flying
another in a hot air balloon, over the top of a school I was visiting. And
there’s another story!!
Spiders
in space
·
Anita and
Arabella, two female cross spiders were launched into orbit in 1973 destined
for the Skylab 3 space station. They were used in experiments that evaluated
their web building skills in near zero gravity among others things.
- And, more recently (November, 2008) another space mission carried another spider in space. Like all astronauts, the two spiders aboard space shuttle mission STS-126 went through a rigorous selection process, fitness tests and hours of training to prepare them for their scheduled launch tonight.
- Joining a human crew of seven, the orb-weaver
spiders were strapped into a special compartment aboard the shuttle
Endeavour when it blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Their
destination was the International Space Station, where they remained for
the next three months, circling Earth more than 1,300 times at 17,500mph.
- The spiders were one of two educational experiments designed by The University of Colorado-Boulder's BioServe Space Technologies that flew on Endeavour's mission to the ISS.
- The purpose of the spider experiment was to compare the web spinning and feeding of spiders in space with that of spiders on the ground. Over a dozen Colorado middle schools monitored the progress of the experiments through the videos, data, and images sent back from the ISS.
- While the astronauts set to work on
expanding the space station and plumbing in a new system that will allow
future crews to recycle urine as drinking water, making them less
dependent on fresh supplies from Earth, the spiders were busy dealing with
the issues of near zero gravit. They eventually worked out how to make a
perfect orb web and caught the fruit flies that had emerged from the
larvae placed in the dog food at the bottom of their special home.
Animals in space
- Fruit flies were first sent into space in 1947, aboard a V2 rocket launched by the US to explore the effects of radiation exposure at high altitudes
- Albert I, a rhesus monkey, became the first primate in space in 1948 but died of suffocation.
- Albert II, launched the following year, died on his return journey
- A stray mongrel from Moscow called Laika became the first dog to go into orbit in 1957 but died a few days into her mission
- France launched a stray black and white tomcat into space in 1963. Felix, the first cat in space, had electrodes fitted in his head to measure neural impulses. He returned safely.
- Another satellite launched by the US in 1970 carried two bullfrogs.
They were kept in a water-filled
centrifuge to test the effect of gravitational fields on them and the inner
ear's balance mechanism.
They were never recovered.
I calmed him down as best I could. Tiger turned and went to his usual spot at the back of the lab. He looked sulky and angry.
I raised my hand. ”Tiger, watch your language!”
I told him to sit down, leave the spider alone, and get out his science journal. I turned to the class, some standing near their seats, wanting to know what was going on. “Wassup wiv Tiger, Mr.Paull?” asked Michael. “’e sick or summat?” “’E swore. Used the F word, sir. Wot you goin’ to do?”
Here's an interesting 2011 spider story.
As I was watching a teacher with her children in a school library, I noticed a black widow in the corner of the room, dangling from a strand of silk.
I quickly gathered the creature, and its egg sac, and placed her in a small plastic container. Later, when I returned to my car, I put the container on the back seat, and promptly forgot about it.
A couple of weeks later, when teaching at UCD, I offered a student a lift when his car had broken down. As he sat down on the passenger seat, he let out a shriek: "Wassat? There! Look!"
The black widow had escaped from my container and made her home in the dashboard of my car.....
Spiders – and their
impact on education!!
Thank
you, Tiger
I started teaching way back in the early
1960s. Well, teaching is perhaps too grand a word. It would be more honest to
say that I began to be paid for standing daily in front of loads of bored
adolescents, opening a well-thumbed science text book, and reading aloud. Then,
scribbling science words on the blackboard to be copied into science notebooks.
13- year-old Tiger always sat alone at the
back of my science lab. He did not sit politely through each lesson. Tiger was
always looking for trouble. Sometimes he smiled benignly at the thirty-two
other boys and girls, six of whom had recently emigrated from India and could
speak but two words of English (‘lav, sir?’). Sometimes Tiger shouted, “S’boring, boring…….science is pissin’
scabby.” Sometimes, to prevent himself from falling asleep, he’d run his
fingers through his greasy hair, scratch his head, and interfere with anyone
sitting close to him working diligently through the science textbook.
My science lessons on Mosquitos and other insects didn’t interest Tiger. School didn’t
interest him and science didn’t engage him. Nothing I did in my science lessons
made any connection to Tiger’s life experience or appealed to his sense of
curiosity. The science I read from the textbook was irrelevant to his world –
especially the way I presented it. His Dad told him that he’d have a job with
him as a bricklayer on the building sites when he was fifteen, so why should he
‘do his best’ in school? What was the point of it all?
In the first week
of October, the miracle of miracles happened - a big change for the better came
over my teaching. Tiger, of all people, and a small garden spider, were my
divine inspirations.
Walking back from shopping at the Coop for
the weekend food, I spotted the most beautiful spider sitting in her intricate
silky web in the black currant bush outside the steps leading up to my flat.
Surprised to see one so late in the year, I fetched a jar, popped the spider
inside, and took her upstairs.
I took the spider to school the following
Monday, put her in a large bell jar with a little soil, some greenery and a
forked tree branch, I set the new home on a small table, away from direct
light, at the back of my science lab.
The following day, I noticed a silk egg
sac dangling from near the center of the spider’s orb web. Sensing the spider
was hungry, I caught a small silverfish darting around the base of my desk,
unscrewed the top of the spider home, and dropped the small creature on the
web. Immediately, the spider came running towards her prey. I sat and watched,
fascinated by the spider’s eating habit, until Tiger’s class came through the
door, breaking the atmosphere by noisily throwing their satchels under their
stools. They were ready for yet another particularly dull science lesson (all chalk
and talk, then reading and writing, and no ‘hands-on’ science
investigation). Before I even started, the kids looked bored. I got up quickly,
pushing the spider home to one side.
As I walked towards the blackboard, Tiger
came through the door. He looked upset. He stared at the floor, mumbling he’d
been sent to Mr. Thomas’ office because, he said, “I was caught looking
through a dirty book, sir. ‘Fore school started. T’ain’t fair.”
“Who
caught you?’ I asked. I wanted to know more about what had happened.
Tiger’s tone changed, and he glared across the room at me, and shouted
belligerently:
“Mr. Jelbert, you know, Mr. Paull, he
looks at us lads through his telescope from the class upstairs. He saw me.
Looking at pictures. You know. Dirty pictures. Naked girls and stuff. Weren’t
my book, though, Mr. Paull. It’s Fatty’s, Fatty White’s. Now Mr. Thomas has it.
Fatty’ll murder me. I’ve got to go back to the boss’s office after school. And
I’ll get caned. I’ll get six, I know I will.”
I calmed him down as best I could. Tiger turned and went to his usual spot at the back of the lab. He looked sulky and angry.
I read a few lines about gases from the
science book, closed it, and picked up the chalk. As I was writing on the
blackboard, asking the kids to open up their journals and copy my notes, there
was a loud shout of “CHRIST!” from
the back of the room. Startled, every head turned to see what was going on.
Tiger was standing up and pointing his index finger and thumb at the bell jar.
His eyes now were wide open. ‘F*# ‘ell!
Look!’ “Mr. Paull, Mr.Paull, there’s a spider ‘ere! It’s killing a
creepy-crawly! It’s f*^** killing it! Look!!!”
I raised my hand. ”Tiger, watch your language!”
” Mr. Paull, Mr. Paull, Can’t ‘elp it. I
can’t f*ing believe it. Look at THAT! The spider, f*+** great!! Fz+** GREAT!!
I told him to sit down, leave the spider alone, and get out his science journal. I turned to the class, some standing near their seats, wanting to know what was going on. “Wassup wiv Tiger, Mr.Paull?” asked Michael. “’e sick or summat?” “’E swore. Used the F word, sir. Wot you goin’ to do?”
I tried to settle everyone down.
“C’mon. Everybody. Thank you, Michael.
Never mind Tiger. He’s just having a moment.” “Get on with your
writing.” “C’mon everybody, no big deal.”
The spider eating her lunch, of course,
was, for Tiger, far more interesting than my science-reading lesson. Tiger
swearing loudly was much more captivating than my science-reading lesson for
the class. “Let’s see. I wanna see,”
shouted David.
I gave in. “Go on, then, everyone, take
a look.” “Go and see what’s in the jar – then get back to your seats.”
The class didn’t need telling twice.
Everyone rushed to join Tiger at the back of the room. He pointed at the spider
in the jar. “Look at that,” he
shouted. “Bloody great!” The kids
stared at the jar and started chattering excitedly about the spider – excited
chatter was something I had never heard in one of my science lessons.
“Ain’t never seen a spider like that! What
is it? Wos it doin’?” someone asked. One of the girls,
Diane, said the spider was so beautiful.
“Can I look at it, sir? Please? Can
I get a maggy glass from the drawer?” she asked.
I thought for a moment. Why not? “‘Course. Go on. Get the tray of maggies.”
Diane fetched the tray and chose a magnifying glass and held it close to the
jar, peering at the spider. “It’s great,
Can I draw it, sir? Please?” “Can I?” she asked.
“Of
course.” I answered, “Use your pencil, not your pen. Oh, don’t,
though, draw it in your science book. That’s for science. Here, there’s a
piece of scrap-paper on my desk you can use.”
Dianne looked at me, and asked, drily,
“Aren’t spiders science, Mr. Paull?”
“’Course, Dianne. Sorry.” I replied, kicking myself.
“Do it, drawing, oh, go on, put it in your science journal.”
The idea caught on and a few more girls
also wanted to draw the spider, sitting in her web, clasping the poor
silverfish. Tiger did not draw the spider in his journal. He sat very still,
ignoring me and everyone else, watching the jar, mesmerized.
Tiger stayed behind after class, and, with
a warm grin and an impish twinkle in his eye, said, “The spider’s great, sir, ain’t it great? You like ‘em? Spiders? They’re brill!”
He looked up at me. “Sorry I swore, sir, sorry. Won’t do it again. ‘Onest!! Don wanna draw, Mr. Paull. Can’t draw, you know. Scabby drawer.”
He looked up at me. “Sorry I swore, sir, sorry. Won’t do it again. ‘Onest!! Don wanna draw, Mr. Paull. Can’t draw, you know. Scabby drawer.”
“Well,” I said,
“I think you can draw, but your pictures are a bit rude, you know. Really
rude.”
Tiger smiled and then said he was going to
get some spiders of his own as soon as he got home.
“Good,
but now get off to your next class. Don’t be late,” I said. “Oh, and don’t forget to see Mr.
Thomas………….and be sure to give the book back to your friend.”
The next day, there was Tiger waiting for
me, before school started, with that impish smile on his face. “Found ‘em,
Mr. Paull, found ‘em.” Tiger had a jar in his satchel. “There were
stacks of ‘em. Tiny ‘uns. Babs, I think, ain’t they? I got free or four. Can I
keep them in the lab, Mr. Paull?”
“ Go on! Can I? Next to yours?” Then, he added:
“Found out about ‘em, too, Mr. Paull. My dad knows what they are – they’re
Garden Spiders, and they eat flies and stuff. You
know what? You’re ok, Mr. Paull. Sorry, sorry, I swore.”
“Thank you, Tiger, thank you. I appreciate
that.” I said. “I’m sorry you swore, too.”
I gave him four jars, telling him that
spiders can’t live together without paralyzing and eating each other. “Make a home for each one, ok? Quick,
school’s starting soon. OH, and you can tell your class what you know about
spiders, ok?”
When his class came for science, Tiger
stood by the blackboard, looking
sheepishly at the front of the room, and told a very respectful, quiet, surprised,
and very attentive audience what he had learned about spiders. I was fascinated
to see how Tiger caught everyone’s attention with his excited, twitchy, body
movements. Tiger had at last discovered something in my science period that
made him feel that wonderful, inside –your-head glow when the brain is
alive and alert. His classmates felt it, too.
“Spiders, “ he said, “ are dead good.” “Look at this one. It’s a
beaut.” He held up one of the jars.
“Guess what I found out………….spiders suck their
food after they’ve crushed and made it watery…….ain’t only the gals that make
silk……..the fella spiders make silk, too, but only when they’re young………..then
they stop and go looking for a spider girl-friend. They mate on the
web………….sometimes the gals kill and eat the fellas.” “Some spiders chase after
stuff they want to eat.”
He’d really done his homework. I was taken
aback by how much Tiger knew, thinking: “Where did he learn that from, then?
All from his dad?” “Well, I know for sure it weren’t from me in science
lessons.” Tiger told his audience that, if anyone wanted to watch, he was
going to release the spiders and their eggs in the school garden at lunchtime.
“They’re goin’ to die soon, y’know, and the eggs will ‘atch, next year, spring,
right, Mr. Paull?”
When he’d finished, everyone clapped. This
was Tiger’s finest hour. “Any questions
for Tiger?” I asked. The hands went up, and Tiger was asked a million
questions, some of which he could answer. What a wonderful lesson about
teaching and learning, I thought.
That night I
checked my spider’s identity in a spider book, learning that it was Meta
segmentata, a common garden species related to the garden spider. Its
courtship routine was different, though. The male, I read, drives off other
male suitors, but doesn’t advance towards the female until an insect is caught
on the female’s web. Both spiders then move towards the struggling insect. The
male’s front legs are larger than the female and he uses them to push the
female away from the insect.
He then gift-wraps
the prey. As the female tucks into her dinner, the male wraps silk around her
legs and then mates with her.
The following day, I went to school early
in the morning, an hour or so before the official start of the day, and went to
the science storeroom. I gathered a box full of microscopes, racks of test
tubes, flasks, and other scientific equipment.
I set them out in the science lab. I made the room look like, well, a
science lab. Oh, and rearranged the stools so that the kids could sit in
groups.
When Tiger’s class came through the door,
the boys and girls looked at my displays of science equipment.
“Hey,” said one, “look….look at all this science stuff……..and
hey, look, we ain’t sitting alone. He’s put us in groups.
Mornin’,
sir, this stuff looks great. Can we touch it?”
Tiger showed me a picture he’d drawn at
home of the beautiful orb-web spider. “Look,
sir, Mr. Paull, see what I did. Can I glue it on the cover of my science
journal, Mr. Paull?”
“Hey,
Tiger, Tiger,” I said, “you did it. You drew your spider. You can
draw, see? And you can draw pretty
good.”
Seeing Tiger operating like a young
scientist, was a first-time experience in my classroom.
I had learned, by sheer luck, what
motivated and engaged my most challenging pupil: observing and studying a small
spider.
It was, in fact, an incredible teachable
moment.
It was THE first ‘Come on, John Paull,
be a REAL teacher. Be professional. Earn your pension.’ wake-up call.
Thank you, Tiger. Thank you.
You helped shape my teaching.
From that day on, I thought as much, if
not more, about how to bring my pupils into my lessons, how to capture their
curiosity, how to engage and motivate them.
Sometimes it worked and sometimes it
didn’t. But it certainly made me more interested in my teaching.
The Story of Sophie
Jeannine, currently a 5th grade teacher, reads the
Tuesday Science section of the New York Times with her students first thing
every Tuesday morning. She knows how and what to read from its contents and how
to raise discussion and activity about its contents.
‘Everyone knows that the best times in teaching
have always been the consequences of some little accident that happened to
direct attention in some new way, to revitalize an old interest which has died
out or to create a brand new interest that you hadn’t had any notion about how
to introduce.
Suddenly, there
it is. The bird flies in the window and that’s the miracle you needed…’ [1]
In my first year
of teaching in a public school, half of my multi-age first/second grade class
(26 students in total) children had already spent one year together. I replaced
a teacher who had left in the early spring on maternity leave.
The school year
had been interspersed with stints with long term substitutes and was punctuated
by disorder. The school building was being renovated and the classroom
had been moved to the basement level. The windows were covered with plywood
until only two days before the school year began. There were boxes,
bookshelves, desks, and all signs of classroom life covered under a tarp in the
middle of the room. Inside, I found mishmashes of supplies, crayons,
books, and math materials, obviously packed by students.
In my class,
there was a large group of challenging, bright, disengaged boys, one child with
special needs who had a full time paraprofessional, and half a dozen students
performing well below grade level. The first month of school was hard.
There seemed to be little to hold the children together as a community,
and I seemed to spend much of my time trying to figure out curriculum that was
new to me.
There seemed even
less time to reflect on what was working well with my students or how I might
make each day more interesting…
Then, along came
a spider……………………
I found a large
house spider on my basement steps and took her to school the following morning.
At our morning
meeting, I showed my students the little creature that was soon named “Sophie,”
after a character in one of our favorite books. We built a habitat for
her, caught and fed her small insects, and thus began a journey of learning
about spiders that would change my classroom forever.
Sophie lived in
our classroom for several weeks. During that time, she spun a beautiful
an intricate web, and suspended an egg sac. The children checked on her
daily, read about spiders, drew spiders, and wrote books about spiders.
Early in November, Sophie died, as spiders do as the winter approaches.
But weeks home was filled with dozens of spiderlings. Sophie’s life
cycle was complete, and her magic new again in our classroom.
Since that time,
seashells, petrified wood, bark beetle twigs, wishing rocks, arrowheads,
caterpillars, sea lion whiskers, wishbones, lightning stones, and ammonites
have enriched and enlivened the morning meeting ritual. One morning, a
black widow entranced us all! Such things inspire my students to think
more deeply about science and the natural world in which we live. Natural
curiosity about these things is followed by the desire to know more.
In the fall, a science journaling project
encouraged the children to document, through word and picture, their own
interests in the natural world. Their experiments constantly amazed
me—especially the level of thinking that went into the observations—from
noticing the upside down reflection in a spoon to finding out that a boat can
carry a heavier load if floating on salt water. There was no end to the
discoveries made and the excited chatter that always followed…
Subject:
spiders and stuff!
Well, my
classroom is 'abuzz' this morning with excitement about Sophie, the spider, and
her web, and what appears to be an egg sac... And now, I know you're right,
John...this is the 'real' stuff, the stuff that excites kids (and teachers, for
that matter). I'm learning as much as they are--but the part I love is
that the kids want to know more...and they're excited. And the kids who thought
Sophie was 'scary' yesterday are now fascinated along with the rest of us. Life
science is an amazing thing for all of us to watch up close--what a buzz there
is in here today!
And another
email, some time later……
Sad news this
morning...Sophie is dying. She began to spin a new web during the night (her
weight was pulling the other one down!). And this morning, she is lying at the
bottom on a rock—legs still moving, but she's done for, I think...the kids are
very sad...but you were right, it is that dying time for them, isn't it?
And judging from her size, she's been around a while...the end of an
exciting era in our classroom...
And then
another……..
You cannot
imagine the excitement in my classroom this afternoon when we discovered the
emergence of 40-odd spiderlings from Sophie's egg sac. I had, only this
morning, added water to the habitat and wondered to myself when or if we might
actually see the baby spiders appear. The discovery was made when the students
were lining up to go home, and it caused quite a commotion! What a great
opportunity it has been for the students to observe the life cycle in full
circle - with Sophie dying a little more than a week ago, and now seeing her
babies hatch in the now empty little habitat that sits on my desk.....the kids
were in absolute amazement, as was I......
Four years
later…….
My classroom had
become a place where children were engaged in the study of science in real
world contexts. The science table was always covered with things that
children brought to school and were curious about….rocks, seashells, petrified
wood, seeds and leaves, twigs etched with bark beetle tracks, dead insects in
cups, bones collected on hikes, experiments with water, chemistry, and air
pressure, and once a sea lion whisker…
Typically an
elementary classroom Workshop: Science!! session in my classroom
begins with
· About fifteen minutes that focuses on describing the session’s
focus (telling a story, recounting an experience) and highlighting a skill the
students will need in the session's investigations (say, modeling how
scientists write in a journal) or a previously taught skill that needs
revisiting.
· How to get help from other students, library books, Internet,
teachers, and, importantly, where the resources are stored - and how to clean
up.
· Showing how to use scientific apparatus, such as the hand lens, a
balance, a timer.
Next a period
(whatever when students work independently or in small groups. When
appropriate, students make entries in their Scientist's Journals as they
explore and investigate. During this time, the teacher supports and prompts
each student by listening, questioning, and offering resources. Finally,
students come together again for a Scientists' Meeting and present before the
community of scientists (classmates).
Ideas come thick
and fast. Sometimes from me. Sometimes from my kids.
Sometimes because
we find a spider’s egg sac in a quiet corner of the classroom.
What follows
offers opportunities for each student to ‘be a scientist’, and to make sense of
natural phenomena; develop knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas,
processes and skills; and learn about researching and communicating ideas.
As I was watching a teacher with her children in a school library, I noticed a black widow in the corner of the room, dangling from a strand of silk.
I quickly gathered the creature, and its egg sac, and placed her in a small plastic container. Later, when I returned to my car, I put the container on the back seat, and promptly forgot about it.
A couple of weeks later, when teaching at UCD, I offered a student a lift when his car had broken down. As he sat down on the passenger seat, he let out a shriek: "Wassat? There! Look!"
The black widow had escaped from my container and made her home in the dashboard of my car.....
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| The black widow that made its web in my car......... |
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| Isn't she beautiful? |
The Story of
Penelope the
Spider
Paula collects and studies spiders.
She’s a scientist.
Because she studies spiders, she is
called an Arachnologist, a Spider Scientist.
Paula knows everything there is to
know about spiders.
Paula searches in her garden, in her
garden shed, in her garage, and out in the countryside.
When Paula catches a spider she
hasn’t seen before (there are, after all, over 35,000 different kinds of
spiders in the world and Paula hasn’t seen them all), she notes in her Spider
Journal when and where she found it, and then, very carefully picks it up and
takes it home to study.
Because she’s an arachnologist, Paula
wants to find out everything she can about the new spider. She starts by
looking at it through a big magnifying glass. Then, Paula puts the spider into
a special spider home (she calls it a Spider
Motel) so that the new spider is really comfortable and has plenty of food
and water.
Paula then sits patiently and watches
to see what her new spider likes to eat and to see if it spins a web.
When Paula has filled up her Spider
Journal with all her observations, she takes the spider back to exactly the
spot where she found it, and says,
“Thank you,
spider, I appreciated the time you spent with me. It was
really good getting to know you.
Now, go and
enjoy the rest of your spider life.”
Paula’s favorite spider is her
tarantula, PENELOPE. Penelope lives in a
really big, beautiful spider home that Paula calls a Spider Hotel.
Every morning, before she has her own
breakfast, Paula feeds Penelope one big juicy green cricket.
Every evening, she takes Penelope out
of her Spider Home to do her 8 leg-stretching exercises on the carpet.
Not long ago, Paula decided to move
to a new house. She arranged for two strong men to come and take all her
furniture to her new home in a really big, white moving van.
They were surprised when they saw
Paula’s spiders in the jars. When they saw Penelope sitting in her Spider Hotel
they said they were frightened of spiders.
“We’re not takin them! What happens if they escape?”
Paula smiled, and said, ”That’s OK. My friend John will help me. He’s
not frightened of spiders.”
John was delighted to help, so, on
the day of the move, he went to Paula’s house.
When John arrived, he saw the two
strong men carrying Paula’s furniture, her computer, printer, television set,
her books and journals, and carefully stacking everything in the back of their
big truck.
When the truck was filled with
furniture and all of Paula’s personal belongings, John and Paula carried all
the spider motels to their cars. They tucked them close together in a big box
so the jars wouldn’t bang into each other and crack the glass. They didn’t want
an accident that would set any of Paula’s spiders loose!
Paula strapped Penelope’s Spider Hotel
into her car passenger seat.
When they arrived at Paula’s new
house, the men were already there, carrying in the furniture.
After an hour or so, the men told
Paula they had one more chair to bring in. Paula went to her car and carried Penelope’s
Spider Hotel safely in her arms.
Just as Paula was walking through the
door, her cell phone rang. She carefully put Penelope’s glass motel on the top
of the bookcase and took her cell phone from her pocket.
Just then, the men came up to the
front door with Paula’s very large office chair.
They tried to get it through the
door. It wouldn’t go at first, so they laid the chair on its side and tried to
wriggle it through. As the last leg of the chair was pushed inside the door, it
caught the bookcase and made it wobble.
Then the worst thing possible
happened.
Penelope’s Spider Hotel lost its
balance and came crashing down to the floor, smashing into a thousand tiny
pieces.
Paula and John were horrified!
Paula rushed over to see if Penelope
was hurt.
Penelope was lying on her back, her
eight legs trembling.
Very upset, Paula bent over, picked
up Penelope very, very carefully, and turned her over. Penelope had been stabbed
in the back with a sharp piece of glass.
Paula then did something a spider
scientist should never have done. Forgetting how fast Penelope’s heart was beating,
Paula put her right finger and thumb together, got hold of the glass dagger,
and gently pulled it out,. As soon as
the glass point came out of Penelope’s body, greeny blue blood spurting onto
Paula’s hand.
Greeny blue
blood!
John had never seen a spider’s blood
before. He didn’t know it was blue.
Paula told him later it’s because
spiders have green copper in their blood, not red iron like us.
Paula pressed her right thumb over
the wound to stop the green blood from flowing out of the wound.
She looked up and pleaded:
“Help
me! Help me! Help me save Penelope’s life”
There was silence.
Then,
surprisingly, one of the two men blurted:
“I know. I
know what we can do. I’ll get a band- aid. That’s what I use when I cut myself. It’ll work.
It’ll save Penelope’s life!”
It sounded like a really good idea.
The man ran to his truck and quickly brought back a band aid, and cut it to
size with his sharp scissors.
“Right,”
he said, “when I count to three, take
your thumb off the cut and I’ll stick the band aid on. Right on the wound,
ok? One,
two……”
At the count of THREE, Paula took her thumb off the wound, and, before the blood
could spurt out again, the man quickly stuck the band aid in place.
The green, sticky blood stopped
oozing out of Penelope’s back. Penelope began to move her legs. Paula gently
put her on the floor. Everyone relaxed and smiled at Penelope as she stretched
her 8 legs and walked around the room.
Thank goodness. Penelope looked as if
she was OK.
The big man looked pleased with himself. He had saved Penelope’s life.
But, after a
minute or two, the blood began seeping under the band aid, dripping down Penelope’s
front legs.
Paula picked Penelope
up again and gently peeled away the band aid, and blocked the wound again with
her thumb.
It was then
that John had the BEST idea he’d ever had.
“Hang
on, I have a really good idea. I know what to do!“ he said, as he ran out the front door to his
car. He returned, holding a small tube of super glue.
“THIS
will work.”
Paula took her thumb off the wound.
Quickly, John squirted the super glue on Penelope’s back.
As soon as it touched Penelope’s
skin, the glue hardened………………and stopped the flow of green blood.
The glue WORKED. Penelope was saved.
Paula put her back on the floor, and,
after a minute or two, Penelope slowly walked around the room.
The house-movers smiled. They had never seen anything like
this before in their lives.
They said goodbye, and went off in
their truck, talking to each other about Penelope the Spider.
That night, Paula took Penelope out
of her Spider Hotel, let her walk around for a while on the carpet, petted her,
and then gave Penelope a special treat: another big, juicy cricket.
The next day Paula ‘phoned John.
” Penelope’s
doing well.” “I’m going to give Penelope one cricket for breakfast, one cricket
for lunch and then another for her dinner. If I do that every day, then she’ll shed her skin as all spiders do
when they grow. And she’ll shed the blob of glue.”
So, for the
next ten days, Penelope had three green crickets a day, one in the morning, one
at lunchtime, and a really big one in the evening.
Then, it began to happen, just as
Paula hoped.
Paula ‘phoned John and said: “Come quick. Come over right away. Penelope
is shedding her skin.”
John was excited to see the new Penelope
emerge, leaving her old skin and the glue blob behind.
Penelope’s body was wet and shiny, and
the wound had disappeared.
Penelope was, thank goodness, as good
as new.
About Tarantulas
The oldest spider, according to Guinness World Records, was a female
Tarantula that lived to be 49 years old.
Most species taking 2 to 5 years to reach adulthood, but some species
may take up to 10 years to reach full maturity.
Upon reaching adulthood, males typically have but a 1 to 1.5 year period
left to live and will immediately go in search of a female with which to mate. Male
tarantulas rarely molt again once they reach adulthood.
Some Tarantulas are dull brown, while
others are brightly colored. The sizes range, too, from as small as a
fingernail, to as big as a dinner plate.Tarantulas live in rainforests and semi-deserts. They hunt and eat insects, rodents and small birds.
They leap onto their prey and stick their hollow, furry fangs into the prey. Venom is pumped in and liquefies the prey’s insides.
Then the spider eats it like bug soup.
When they’re not hunting, Tarantulas spend a lot of their time hiding.
Lots of animals will try to eat them although some do not succeed, for the tarantula has a few good defenses.
The hairs on the back legs and the abdomen can break off with the slightest touch; borrowing into an enemy, causing immense pain.
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