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Description: Spider webs are found in many areas around a schoolyard. Students can locate, identify and map any spider webs they find in their schoolyard. They will search Internet sites for information on types of spiders and webs.
Grade Levels: 4-12(Note: This experiment can be simplified or made more challenging depending on the developmental levels of your students. See Teacher Information.)
Approximate Time Involved: One to three 30-minute classroom planning sessions, Three 15-30 minutes to find webs, map them, gather data in chosen habitat, 20 minutes to enter data online, one or two 30-minute classroom sessions to examine results, state conclusions, draw inferences, and make recommendations. NOTE: Observations should be done over a three day period with 24 hours in between.
Teacher Information:
Spider webs are found in many areas around a schoolyard -on buildings, in pipes, on fences, hedges, bushes, trees, leaf litter, trees, tall grass, flower gardens, and under outdoor lighting fixtures. Although a spider may not be present during the day because many are nocturnal, their prey or remains of their prey will be found in the web. Students can identify the types of webs found and in which environment they are located.
This should become a team exercise where your student groups might each develop and write a hypothesis, list the materials they would use, the number of each item, and a procedure. An excellent way to assess this activity is to have the teams repeat each other's experiment to see if they achieve the same results. This will also replicate the real world challenges facing a research scientist.
Here is an opportunity for your students, especially those at late high school, to present and defend their spider web results to a professional in the field:
Dr. Elaine AbuSharbain, Science Educator at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, has agreed to review any student designed experiments and their results, conclusions, inferences, and recommendations. Elaine's Email Address is: eabusha@siue.edu
Challenging Your Students to Be Problem Solvers:
To make this experiment more challenging to your students, you might just want to pose a question such as: Design and conduct an investigation to determine the types of spider webs found in several different locations in your schoolyard. In teams, the students can form a hypothesis, then design and conduct an experiment to test their hypothesis. They need to write up their experiment in such a way and in enough detail that another group could repeat their experiment to see if the same results are obtained. This will replicate the real world challenges facing a research scientist. Older students could expand upon the web type investigation with one that asks: What numbers and types of insects are caught in web over a 3 day period?
Student Instructions Available to download as a PDF file.
Needed Materials:Insect and spider field guides, web identification pictures, spray bottle(a fine mist of water will make the webs more visible), notebooks, magnifying glasses, ruler.(NOTE: If you plan to run several different tests in different locations, you may need more than the suggested amount of materials.)
Safety Rule: Although most spiders are harmless, caution the students against handling them. There are two poisonous spiders to watch out for: the Black Widow and the Brown Recluse. The Black Widow has a rounded, glossy black body with an hourglass-shaped red orange mark on its underside. The shape of this mark may vary from spider to spider, and some may have more than one mark. The Brown Recluse spider is tan to yellowish brown with a "fiddle" marking on the cephalothorax(joined head and thorax). They are about 6 mm long(5/8 inch), and has six eyes arranged in a distinctive pattern. I recommend showing the students pictures of these before the activity. If they don't handle any spiders, there shouldn't be a hazard to them. Refer to the internet link below for good pictures of both spiders.
Spiders-Black Widow and Brown Recluse-also includes quality imagesProcedure:
Student Information: The following information will provide you with the steps for your spider web investigation. It is important to hold all of the variables constant except for those that are being manipulated. Constant (or controlled variables) would be such things as: the time of day data is collected, and the amount of time between observations. Manipulated (or independent) variables are not part of this investigation as we are not changing the variables, just making observations of data. The responding (or dependent) variable for this experiment will be the number and variety of spider webs found. NOTE: Temperature and precipitation are two variables that will difficult to control or intentionally manipulate in this experiment. However, from your experiments, you may be able to infer as to whether temperature and precipitation has any impact on the number and variety of webs observed. The reporting form for this experiment is set up so that you can determine how many schoolyard locations you want to observe. Also remember that a good scientific experiment is repeated a minimum of three times. Therefore, your data will be more accurate if you observe your location 3 days in a row to be sure you have observed all webs in that location accurately.
Procedural Steps for Conducting the Investigation
Below is a list of questions that can be used to stimulate student discussions. If your students are at a developmental level where you are able to challenge their higher level thinking skills, then only present them with the first set of questions from each group below. Use the second list of questions as a way to stimulate thinking when you students seem unable to expand their knowledge on their own.
Examining Local Results
Examining Local and Online Results
Critter Links
Spiders: An organism for Teaching Biology Here are some activities where students explore basic ecology concepts and scientific processes using spiders as model organisms.
Iowa State Department of Entomology This is a good source for information on insects, including some insect recipes.
Wolf Spiders Info and activities dealing with Wold spiders.
Spider Web Construction An explanation of how a spiders may build its web.
Insects, Arachnids, & other Arthropods Make spiders with keyboard characters
Invertebrate Zoology--Spiders For more information about spiders
Invertebrate Zoology--Spiders Photo Gallery Here some picture of some spiders
Spiders For information about the Black Widow and Brown Recluse-also includes quality images
More links to Schoolyard Habitat Information
Schoolyard Habitat Links Learn more about developing and maintaining schoolyard and backyard habitats by visiting these links.
Copyright, 2005
by Prism Press
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