I found a resource that taught students about crickets………
By using insects as a learning tool gives students the opportunity to have practical experiences in relation to the behaviour of animals, which is closely linked to the principals of ecology thus giving children the opportunity to develop and understand ecological concepts.
A behaviour to investigate in the classroom could be the behaviour of crickets. Looking into how their behaviour changes with different environment. This could be done in many ways from having two enclosures set up with different amounts of vegetation. One with a lot and the other with little and or even perhaps one with more food than the other; Students would then make predictions followed by observations on the different behaviours discussing their findings (inquiry learning). Another interesting subject to investigate would be the noise levels within the classroom and if the insects behaviour changes during times of quiet and like in all classrooms the noise levels become very loud.
Stimulation is one of the most important aspects of learning, if you are able to stimulate children’s through a visual cue that is interesting why not use it? Crickets are easy to look after, they don’t cost a lot to feed, they don’t smell, if anything goes wrong they are easily replaced, and the most important thing is that they are something different which would create an amazing learning environment , where children/parents and teachers would all be learning about and gain a deeper understanding of ecological concept’s.
