Managing Mosquitoes Activity - For Teachers

Our activity Managing Mosquitoes helps students learn about the lives of mosquitoes, the dangers some of them pose, and how we can use our understanding of them to reduce their population growth in our own backyards.

To dive deeper into the ecology of mosquitoes, read All About Mosquitoes.

This activity is designed according to a 5E model. It is recommended mostly for high school students, in grades 9 or above.

For younger grades (5 or below), we suggest focusing mainly on the Engage and Explore sections, with a brief version of the Explain section.

Tips for Classroom Implementation

You can help your students learn that there is more they can do to avoid mosquitoes than just using insect repellent. Image by CDC.

In this lesson, students will complete a variety of activities to learn about mosquitoes. Through class activities, presentations, discussions, and group and individual projects, students will learn and solidify their knowledge about mosquitoes. They will also use two different media projects to communicate what they’ve learned.

Time Required: 3.5 hours, can be 1 hour the first day (rain activity, presentation/discussion), 2 hours split over the second and third days (PSA activity), and 30 minutes (independent writing) the final day.

Classroom Setup: The rain activity works in almost any classroom, but it’s good to check in advance to make sure there are some containers around that might collect water (even just in the lids) if it were to rain inside. Make sure you have a good presentation space and areas where students can easily work in groups. Check that students have the technology needed to create videos (i.e., personal smart phones). You can design groups around making sure every group has one. Otherwise, you will want to have groups schedule a time for you to record their PSA with your phone or a camera.

Before You Begin: If you don’t want to use up butcher paper to cover items, wooden sticks or dowels that students can place over “treated” water would be useful, or they can use sticky notes.
Look through the mosquito presentation; make sure to look through it to become familiar with it beforehand. Make sure your students take the mosquito quizzes if you'd like to measure their learning through this lesson. The pre-quiz should be given at the very start of the activity.

More Tips:

• The sound of a thunder storm is great to play during the rain activity to engage students further.
• The PSA activity is a good opportunity for students to think about what types of information they learn best from, and what types of messages change their minds, before they storyboard out a video plan.
• Make it clear you are looking for creativity in the PSA videos! And you can help them with this too. You might dress as a mosquito or a vector control person, or encourage them to.
• If you are unsure of any answers for the mosquito worksheet, feel free to email dr.biology@asu.edu from your school email address.

Extensions

• Individually, in groups, or as a class, students can design an infographic with the most important pieces of information about staying safe from mosquitoes. They might share these around school or with other classrooms.

Objectives

After the lesson, students should be able to:

• Explain the life cycle of mosquitoes
• Describe how mosquitoes are vectors of disease
• Describe how to control mosquitoes at various life stages
• Communicate important information to others that can affect human health