How Does a Ladybug Fly?

Second graders studied this clip of a ladybug lifting off of a blade of grass.  After making observations and drawing a model of the ladybug they had a few questions.  The observed that the ladybug appeared to have 2 sets of wings, red and black.  They asked if the ladybug needed both sets of wings to fly?

We decided to investigate that question.  Students studied the video and their model and created 3D models of ladybugs.  Here are a few of them:

Before we conducted our test, students made claims about what they thought a ladybug used to fly. They gave evidence for their thinking to prove their claim was correct.  Here is how the class was divided in their claims:

Students decided to test the ability of their ladybugs to fly one windy day by throwing them like paper airplanes.  We measured the distance they traveled.  The farthest went 12 feet and the shortest distance was 7 feet 10 inches.

We returned to the classroom and discussed our findings.  I asked the students if our investigation helped us answer our question.  They all agreed that it hadn't.  I asked how we could change our investigation to answer our question.  The answer was to get live ladybugs, take the red wings off of one and the black wings off of the other and see if they could fly.  Since that wouldn't be very kind, we went back to our video and studied it carefully.  We also remembered that we had read that a beetle (a ladybug is a form of beetle) has a protective covering over its wings.  With that information and our video.  We decided that a ladybug flies with its black wings.  It lifts off the red ones to allow the black ones to fold out. Our evidence came from observations from the video and our research.

During this activity, students did a lot of writing, drawing, thinking, questioning, observing, planning, computation and problem solving.  They were acting as scientists using all they tools they had available to them.

Students did a great job on this activity.  Even though our investigation didn't help us to answer our question, we leaned a lot.  Sometimes scientists have to reevaluate their plan and that's okay.