A butterfly's life cycle

A butterfly's life cycle

Online interactive
Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about understanding a butterfly's life cycle.

monarch butterfly

Knowing about life cycles helps you to understand one way animals and plants have adapted to survive.

This understanding helps us when we are interested in the survival of a species.

  1. Click on the link to the Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle (below). This will take you to another website.

  2. Click on the picture. You can then click on the labels to find out about the stages of the life cycle.

  3. Read the information for each label.

  4. Close the window. (You can return to it if you need to.)

  5. Click Next to answer four questions about the butterfly life cycle.

Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle

Question

Which is the growing stage of the monarch butterfly's life cycle?

       
Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle

 

    • Eggs

    • Caterpillar

    • Pupa

    • Butterfly

Question

What is the main reason for the butterfly stage of the life cycle?

       
Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle

 

    • To look after the caterpillars so they don't die

    • To lay eggs so there will be more butterflies

    • To grow into bigger adult butterflies

    • To help flowers by drinking their nectar.

Question 1Change answer

Why does the butterfly lay its eggs on the leaves of a swan plant?

Question Change answer

Sometimes we have an everyday word and a science word that mean the same thing.

Drag each word to match the word that is another name for the same stage of the life cycle. (One stage will be left over.)

Drag and drop image target
Task administration: 

This resource includes a link to an interactive resource on the Science Learning Hub.  We suggest that this be uploaded and saved so students can access without having to go to a different site.

Copyright: 

All images copyright to PhotoKete are used under a commercial license and can be freely used for educational purposes in Aotearoa New Zealand.

monarch butterfly

Image: (c) J.Fisher, PhotoKete.

Level:
4
Curriculum info: 
Science, Knowledge, Living World
Keywords: 
Life processes, insects, butterflies, monarch butterflies, life cycles
Description of task: 
Task: Answer questions about a monarch butterfly's life cycle. Assessment focus: insect life cycle. This resource includes an interactive infographic. You will need Adobe Flash Player to view it.
Curriculum Links: 
Science capabilities
The capabilities focus is brought about by the conversations you have and the questions you ask.
 
Capability: Interpret representations
This resource provides opportunities to discuss the meanings and scienctific conventions of life cycle diagrams.
 
Science capabilities: 
Interpret representations
Answers/responses: 
Question Answer
Y8 (11/2013)* 
Which is the growing stage of the monarch butterfly's life cycle? Caterpillar Moderate
What is the main reason for the butterfly stage of the life cycle? To lay eggs so there will be more butterflies Very easy
Why does the butterfly lay its eggs on the leaves of a swan plant?

Answer should refer to providing food for the caterpillar.

Examples:

  • The swan plant is a food source for the caterpillars.
  • When the eggs from the adults hatch the baby caterpillars have food straight away and don't need to spend time and energy looking for it.
 Moderate
Match the word that is another name for the same stage of the life cycle

Adult - Butterfly

Eggs

Larva - Chrysalis

Pupa - Caterpillar

 Easy

*Based on a sample of 66 Year 8 students completing the task on-line.

Diagnostic and formative information: 
Background information

This task addresses Living World, Ecology: Recognise that there are life processes common to all living things and that these occur in different ways.

Students at Years 7-8 are generally familiar with the life cycle of a monarch butterfly, and are able to reproduce a diagram. This task is a starting point for taking  further the students' understanding of the purposes of the different stages of the life cycle. It provides a good discussion starter about why different animals have particular life cycles, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Stages of a butterfly life cycle

Egg: fertilisation to produce an embryo

Caterpillar: feeding and growth

Chrysalis: metamorphosis from one form to another

Adult/butterfly: reproduction

The stages of the life cycle

Almost half the trial students thought that the pupa is the growing stage.

A common misconception of the trial students was thinking that the butterfly's purpose was to help flowers by drinking nectar. These students do not appreciate that, while this is a benefit for the flower, it is not the butterfly's main purpose.

A number of students' responses showed that they had a misconception that the butterflies eat the leaves of the swan plant. 

Examples of these sorts of responses:

  • So when the butterfly gets old it can eat the plants.
  • Because they can feed off that plant as well as their babies.

Next Steps

Check what students mean by "growing". Do they mean "getting bigger" (involving taking in food) or are they interpreting growing as "turning into" (rearranging original materials/metamorphosis)? The caterpillar is the only stage where there is a large and consistent intake of food. 

Ask students to look for evidence that shows that at a particular stage the monarch's size increases. (Evidence  relates to  increase in size, and a large amount of food being eaten.)

Discuss that the butterfly's wings do get bigger immediately after hatching as the wings are inflated with fluid.  Is this the same as growing?

Ask students to suggest together ideas about the purposes of the egg and pupa stages. They could then research the question to compare their ideas with the accepted science explanation.

Ask students to think about the advantages and disadvantages of different life cycles. Ask:

  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of laying eggs instead of giving birth to live babies?
  • What strategies does (a butterfly) have for overcoming the disadvantages?
  • What advantages does having a complete change of form (complete metamorphosis) have for (butterflies)?

Science vocabulary

The two most difficult to match were caterpillar and larva, and chrysalis and pupa.

The following ARBs are about life cycles: