Monday, April 6, 2009

Teachable Moment with Roaches

As a part of our diversity of life unit in science, one of our objectives is to introduce the concept of adaptation by pointing out the structure and behaviors of an insect and how it relates to those adaptations. The insects we are using are Madagascar Hissing Roaches, and as you might guess classroom has also become housing for these little hissing critters. Today my students and I were able observe the molting process with our roaches. Because the this insect is encased in its rigid exoskeleton, which cannot expand, the only way an insect can grow is to get out of the exoskeleton. This is the process is called molting. Below is a video of a couple of our roaches shedding their exoskeleton.



Mr. McClung

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know what? Could have gone ALL day without seeing these guys...lololol. Hum...hissing roaches, don't even have a good line to follow..giggle

Room 8, Melville Intermediate said...

Did you need to get them from a special place like a shop or are they freely available? I was amazed at the video with their colour when they first shed their skin being such a bright white colour!
Mr Webb and Room 8, Melville Intermediate, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand.

jkmcclung said...

Yes we do have to special order them from a company that supplies our science materials. @grandmamac, your right, they are gross little critters.

The Trucker's Wife said...

Some classes have fuzzy critters for class pets. You have roaches. Please don't ask Courtney to bring them home. Please...

jkmcclung said...

@truckerswife you'll the first on the classroom rotation list ;)

Mr. McClung

Courtney said...

why can't he ask me to bring them home, mom? They are so cool!!

Wm Chamberlain said...

If you let them go, would we have an invasion of huge cockroaches? I wonder how well they would survive with all the birds.