...and older students had broader understanding about insects' characteristics than K-2 students. Overall, students lacked an understanding of insects' life cycle which differs from Shepardson's (1997) three- stage model that omitted the egg. Students had greater personal knowledge about the harmful than about the helpful aspects of insects for humans. Suggestions are made on building units of instruction using students' personal questions about insects.

Introduction

Insects are everywhere. It is estimated that there are more than one million different species of the Class Insecta (Borror, Triplehorn, & Johnson, 1989). According to Wilson (1992), there are more kinds of insects than all other groups combined. Insects, such as butterflies, are perhaps the most photographed animals for their aesthetic value (Adams, 1992). Frequently, these photographs have been magazine covers and components of advertisement campaigns. Sometimes, unusual aspects about insects are reported such as during the summer of 1998 in the central United States when there was an emergence of both the 13- and 17-year cicadas. This simultaneous emergence was the first since the American Revolution. Despite the high interest in insects, such as butterfly houses, only a few studies have examined students' understanding about what insects are and their impact.

Tunnicliffe and Reiss (1999) investigated drawings of the vertebrate skeleton and the organism's internal organs made by various ages of elementary children. They found that older English students have a better understanding of animals' internal anatomy. They concluded that learning about animals and their internal anatomy began in the home before attending school. Braund (1998) asked elementary children to draw pictures of vertebrates and invertebrates. This study did not address the relationships of size of the organism regardless of whether they were invertebrate or vertebrate. Wandersee, Mintzes, and Novak (1994) summarized the research about alternative conceptions in biology. They reported that students generally classified animals as exclusively vertebrates.

Shepardson (1997) conducted a study about what first graders understand about insects' life cycles. His study focused upon beetles and butterflies. Prior to instruction, the first graders described three different models of an insect's life cycle. The one-stage model was one in which an insect grew larger without metamorphosis. In a two-stage model, a larva changed directly into the adult. The three-stage model depicts larva - pupa - adult metamorphosis. The post-instructional analysis showed that the first graders had not understood the need for a fertilized egg before the larva would appear. Earlier, Tamir, Gal-Chappin, and Nussnovitz (1981) reported that most...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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