# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.text
Made a bunch of templates for Zoom Breakout Rooms.

-->Copy the slide you want to use to a new deck, make enough slides for each group & number them. 
--> Add your topic.
-->Share with students as "Anyone in the Organization can Edit" 

#sschat 
https://t.co/1w5QG94Po2

# data[].attributes.wish_content.attachment_props.original_text
Made a bunch of templates for Zoom Breakout Rooms.

-->Copy the slide you want to use to a new deck, make enough slides for each group & number them. 
--> Add your topic.
-->Share with students as "Anyone in the Organization can Edit" 

#sschat 
https://t.co/1w5QG94Po2 https://t.co/iFq2ZKKl0b

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.embed_code
Made a bunch of templates for Zoom Breakout Rooms.

-->Copy the slide you want to use to a new deck, make enough slides for each group & number them.
--> Add your topic.
-->Share with students as "Anyone in the Organization can Edit" #sschat https://t.co/1w5QG94Po2 pic.twitter.com/iFq2ZKKl0b
— Ms. Kathryn Greene 🌎 👩‍🏫 (she/her) (@MsGreeneEdu) September 17, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Made a bunch of templates for Zoom Breakout Rooms.

-->Copy the slide you want to use to a new deck, make enough slides for each group & number them. 
--> Add your topic.
-->Share with students as "Anyone in the Organization can Edit" 

#sschat 
https://t.co/1w5QG94Po2 https://t.co/iFq2ZKKl0b

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Made a bunch of templates for Zoom Breakout Rooms.

-->Copy the slide you want to use to a new deck, make enough slides for each group & number them. 
--> Add your topic.
-->Share with students as "Anyone in the Organization can Edit" 

#sschat 
https://t.co/1w5QG94Po2 https://t.co/iFq2ZKKl0b

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Made a bunch of templates for Zoom Breakout Rooms.

-->Copy the slide you want to use to a new deck, make enough slides for each group & number them. 
--> Add your topic.
-->Share with students as "Anyone in the Organization can Edit" 

#sschat 
https://t.co/1w5QG94Po2

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writing education literacy reading "mentor texts" english

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Each Mini Moves for Writers video teaches you how to use one professional writing move that will enhance your writing style, argumentation, voice, grammar, or organization. Check out just one to help you master a specific move, or watch multiple videos to make your writing into a professional masterpiece.

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Been distance-teaching Romeo and Juliet to my freshmen and one of them sent me this meme today and I have never been more fulfilled in this job
#TeacherLife

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Been distance-teaching Romeo and Juliet to my freshmen and one of them sent me this meme today and I have never been more fulfilled in this job
#TeacherLife https://t.co/RDgeGpERhc

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Been distance-teaching Romeo and Juliet to my freshmen and one of them sent me this meme today and I have never been more fulfilled in this job#TeacherLife pic.twitter.com/RDgeGpERhc
— Micah Persell (@MicahPersell) May 19, 2020

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Been distance-teaching Romeo and Juliet to my freshmen and one of them sent me this meme today and I have never been more fulfilled in this job
#TeacherLife https://t.co/RDgeGpERhc

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Been distance-teaching Romeo and Juliet to my freshmen and one of them sent me this meme today and I have never been more fulfilled in this job
#TeacherLife https://t.co/RDgeGpERhc

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Been distance-teaching Romeo and Juliet to my freshmen and one of them sent me this meme today and I have never been more fulfilled in this job
#TeacherLife

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Cycle 6 Master Course Lessons 1-8
Cycle 6 Digital Planner Lessons Week 1 Day 1 - Week 2 Day 4
STAAR Revision and Editing Digital Planner Lessons Week 2 Day 5 and Week 3 Day 1

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Listen to my interview with Marisa Thompson (transcript):
Sponsored by Peergrade and 3Doodler

Check out information about Marisa Thompson's Ultimate TQE Course at the bottom of this page!

So much of the learning we do comes from texts: articles, textbooks, novels, and all kinds of online publications. Sometimes, those texts come in less traditional forms; in fact, our use of the word "text" has broadened over time to include things like films, images, and even diagrams. Regardless of what form they come in, texts make up the bulk of how our students experience learning.

But too often, when we assign texts to students, we find that they don't experience them with much depth. One reason for that may be that we don't set them up to do that. In many text-based classes (English, history, science), the learning cycle often consists of (1) consuming a section of the text, (2) answering teacher-created questions about the text, (3) taking a test after several sections have been completed.

For years, high school English teacher Marisa Thompson followed this same programming, and got typical results: Some students did the required work, but never seemed particularly invested in the books themselves. Others completed the questions unevenly, sometimes not answering them all, other times copying work from their peers. And when students didn't do the work, they got calls home and office referrals.

As this pattern repeated itself year after year, Thompson became more frustrated: The texts themselves were wonderful, but students weren't experiencing them the way they were meant to be experienced. Instead, they had shallow interactions with them, doing whatever surface work had to be done to get a grade.

Finally, she started experimenting with a different approach, and the way she teaches texts now is completely different from the way she used to. Her current approach, which she calls TQE, is similar to Socratic Seminar, where students lead a discussion on a given text, but with a few twists. Since implementing this new approach, Thompson has seen her students reading much more than they used to, and with much more depth than ever before. They are having college-level conversations about books in class, and for the first time, they seem excited about the books they're reading.

On top of that, Thompson's prepping and grading work for these class sessions is down to almost nothing.

What I love about this method, and why I'm sharing it here, is that I think it could be applied in a lot of different areas, not just with the study of novels. In any class where students need to read a text in order to learn, something along these lines could be implemented, and I think you'll find that the learning in your classroom gets much richer as a result. So as you read about TQE, think about how you might be able to apply it in your content area.

The Problem

As an English teacher, Thompson found that her students were experiencing books in a very shallow, grade-focused way.

"(I would) send students home, maybe get them started on Chapter 1, and then, Hey guys, go home and read Chapter 2. Come on back and we'll talk about it, and here's your list of questions; you're going to have a reading quiz. I realized I wasn't really assessing their reading with homework and quizzes. I was assessing whether or not they did their homework questions."

This method not only diminished the value of the books students were reading, it also led to other problems. "It made reading seem like a hassle," Thomspon says. "I started getting a bunch of cheating. One year I had 10 kids copy off each other. It turned this amazing story-this beautiful novel that everybody should read and enjoy and love-into a discipline problem."

Early Changes

Knowing something had to change, Thompson decided to try grading students only on whether their participation in class indicated that they had read the book.

"I said, 'Look. We're going to read this book, and we're just going to read it and talk about it. You're not going to have study questions. You're not going to have any reading quizzes. But I'm going to know if you read or not. I'm going to know.'"

These early discussions were similar to Socratic Seminar, where students came with questions and Thompson mostly observed. When a student participated in a way that demonstrated that he or she had read the book, their names would be crossed off of a chart. "And that was it," Thompson says. "The standard says, Be able to read and analyze at grade level. And if they're doing that, I mean, yeah, cross their name off. Move on."

For students who scored low on the discussion or who weren't initially comfortable with active participation, Thompson offered alternative means of assessment. "I said, hey, if I'm wrong with your score, then we need to come up with some sort of alternative: They were used to taking annotations, taking notes on their thoughts while they read-you can show me those. You can sit down and have a conversation just one-on-one, or you can take a test. So if you got an eight out of 10, and you're like, 'No, I want the 10 out of 10,' I have a multiple-choice test on the book."

Most of the time, Thompson's initial score on the discussion turned out to be accurate. "I did have a lot of students who had a B for their assessment, and they're like, No, I want the A. Great. And they took the test and then it was cute, because they were like Yeah, I didn't really read all of it. So my assessment was, on average, about 3 or 4 percent higher than what they were normally getting on their tests."

Right away, Thompson started to see changes in how her students were reading. "I had students who started reading more than they were assigned, and they were finishing the book early," she says. Some were even reading ahead.

Over time, Thompson refined her approach, adding small-group time before the large-group discussions, offering scaffolding to help students develop better questions, and structuring student contributions so that the richest questions got the most discussion time.

These changes have so elevated the level of discourse that Thompson sometimes feels like she's teaching college class. "And that's exactly what I tell them: 'What we just did, that was a collegiate literature course. That was amazing. You could walk into a college course and have this discussion.' And you can see that they're enjoying it."

The TQE Method

Here is the approach Thompson uses now, step by step:

1. Students Complete Assigned Reading at Home

Usually, this will be a segment of a longer text, like a few chapters in a novel. Students who show up having not completed the reading are invited to finish up in the hall during small group discussion (step 2) to catch up. They are welcome to return to class for the discussion when they finish.

2. Small Group Discussions (15 minutes)

When they arrive in class, students get into small groups, where they have 15 minutes to share thoughts, lingering questions, and epiphanies (TQEs) they have about the reading. Early in the year, Thompson provides stems to help students generate these (see below), encouraging them to move from the more simplistic ideas on the left to the more complex ones on the right.

3. TQEs on the Board

By the time the 15 minutes is up, each group needs to choose their top 2 TQEs from the group and write them on the board. Although these are meant to serve as the basis for the group discussion, they are not necessarily used as is.

"If they put something on there that is not at the quality or as thought-provoking as we need it to be for the class to discuss, we'll edit it together, the 40 of us," Thompson explains. "So it becomes a writing lesson."

Thompson also insists that when discussing a text, students use the author's name. When discussing Of Mice and Men, for example, she started by having students repeat the name "Steinbeck" five times. "I love Lenny and George. I love Lenny," she told them. "but he's totally fictional. So when you start asking questions like, 'Why did George do that?' George doesn't exist."

Instead, she has students practice asking questions like, "Why did hat theme is Steinbeck have George do that?" "W Steinbeck trying to convey to the rest of us by having his character do that?"

"It's not about the character," she explains. "It's not about the character's motivation, it's the author's purpose in providing that motivation for the character."

4. Class Discussion of TQEs

Thompson then moderates a whole-class discussion of the reading, using the TQEs that have been written on the board. This takes about 40 minutes of class time-she teaches on a block schedule, so there's plenty of time to dig in. When the class is actively studying a novel, they will have these conversations in every class meeting.

As for grading, Thompson simply records when students participate, and that's it. "I have a chart with their little pictures," she explains, "and I cross them off as I go. So I'm not necessarily grading them every single day. My student Sally might have participated a ton one day, and skipped the next day. But my standard-based grading says she is reading and analyzing at at least grade level. I don't need to score each of my 40 kids every single day."

"And the amount of planning is nil," Thompson adds. " I'm not creating, I'm not copying, I'm not collecting, I don't need to waste my time. My prep is reading before bed every night."

What Student-Centered Learning Looks Like

"We have all these really great aphorisms, these quotes about, 'Students should own their learning,' and 'Empower students,'" Thompson observes. "And it's like, well that's great, but how in the heck do we do that?"

Since starting the TQE process, Thompson has seen true student-centered learning in action: Students are in charge of the content of the discussions, and the ability to participate fully has become its own motivator for completing the homework.

"The peer pressure of Everyone's discussing this book- that becomes cool. To have an idea, to have an opinion. So the student comes in, and all of a sudden it's, "Wait, I read that part, and I think this," you know? And you want to talk about empowering a student? You just turned that student into a part of the classroom community." ♦

If you are a fan of the TQE method and you want to take it further, check out Marisa's Ultimate TQE Course. This course will revolutionize your reading and writing instruction and assessment through student-led inquiry, intentional teacher guidance, feedback that is immediately useful to students while eliminating the need for at-home grading, even for essays, and a personable approach to teaching and learning that leaves everyone in the room energized and engaged.

Cult of Pedagogy receives a portion of the Ultimate TQE Course sales that come through the link on this page.

Come back for more.
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Deeper Class Discussions with the TQE Method

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Want your students to have rich, complex conversations about the texts they read? This method leads to the kinds of classroom discussions you thought only happened in college.

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We are so thrilled today to bring you an interview today that brings together two worlds: Brave New Teaching and Spark Creativity!

Today we interview Betsy Potash: teacher, creator, mom, entrepreneur, influencer, and straight-up amazing human. Betsy specifically shares with all of us a new strategy to take into your classrooms TODAY: Hexagonal Thinking.

Check out the strategy here on Betsy's Insta:

A close up example of using hexagonal thinking with All American Boys!

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To Think Hexagonally (with Betsy Potash) [S2 E46] - Brave New Teaching

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We are so thrilled today to bring you an interview today that brings together two worlds: Brave New Teaching and Spark Creativity! Today we interview Betsy Potash: teacher, creator, mom, entrepreneur, influencer, and straight-up amazing human. Betsy specifically shares with all of us a new strategy to take into your classrooms TODAY: Hexagonal Thinking.

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TED-Ed celebrates the ideas of teachers and students around the world. Discover hundreds of animated lessons, create customized lessons, and share your big ideas.

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history biology literature learning education science humanities school "world history" ap tests smart fun chemistry psychology apush whap study "crash cours...

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At Crash Course, we believe that high-quality educational videos should be available to everyone for free! Subscribe for weekly videos from our current courses! The Crash Course team has produced more than 45 courses on a wide variety of subjects, including organic chemistry, literature, world history, biology, philosophy, theater, ecology, and many more!

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This course covers grammar, the rules and conventions that make language work. We want to make English work for you! In this course you'll learn about: 1. Th...

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education creativity teaching learning teachers teacher "design thinking" sketch-note "maker projects" maker "writing prompts" "language arts"

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I'm a former middle school teacher and current college professor. I want to see teachers unleash the creative potential in all of their students so that kids can be makers, designers, artists, and engineers. I explore research, interview educators, deconstruct systems, and study real-world examples of creativity in action.

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Self-understanding, calm and emotional maturity. All our content is available on our app and website: www.theschooloflife.com We offer online psychotherapy: www.theschooloflife.com/therapy We publish one film a week, on Wednesdays at 14.00hrs GMT.

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Above the Noise Videos | Above the Noise Collection | PBS LearningMedia

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Above the Noise, a YouTube series for teens, cuts through the hype and dives deep into the research behind the issues affecting their daily lives. Every other week, the series investigates controversial subject matter to help young viewers draw informed conclusions, while inspiring media literacy and civic engagement.

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Below are the two main written versions of Sojourner's speech. The original, on the left, was delivered by Sojourner and transcribed by Marius Robinson, a journalist, who was in the audience at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851. And Gage's version is on the right, written 12 years later and published in 1863, The full text of each version follows the synopsis below so you can see the differences line by line. I have highlighted overt similarities between the two versions. While Frances Gage changed most of Sojourner's words and falsely attributed a southern slave dialect to Sojourner's 1863 version, it is clear the origin of Gage's speech comes from Sojourner's original 1851 speech. It is interesting to note that Marius Robinson and Sojourner Truth were good friends and it was documented that they went over his transcription of her speech before he published it. One could infer from this pre printing meeting, that even if he did not capture every word she said, that she must have blessed his transcription and given permission to print her speech in the Anti‐Slavery Bugle. Library of Congress Link to Sojourner's Speech >

Marius Robinson's transcription:
Published June 21, 1851 in the
The Anti-Slavery Bugle

The oldest account of Truth's speech that provides more than a passing mention of it was published by Marius Robinson on June 21, 1851 in the Salem Anti‐Slavery Bugle, a few weeks after the speech was given. This version was not the first published account of the Akron speech, but rather the first attempt to convey what Sojourner Truth said in full.

1. May I say a few words? I want to say a few words about this matter.

2. I am a woman's rights.

3. (a) I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man.

4. (b) I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?

5. I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can (c) eat as much too, if (d) I can get it.

6. I am as strong as any man that is now.

7. As for intellect, all I can say is, (e) if women have a pint and man a quart - why can't she have her little pint full?

8. You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, for we cant take more than our pint'll hold.

9. The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and dont know what to do.

10. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better.

11. You will have your own rights, and they wont be so much trouble.

12. I cant read, but I can hear.

13. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin.

14. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again.

15. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right.

16. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother.

17. And Jesus wept - and Lazarus came forth.

18. And how came Jesus into the world?

19. (f) Through God who created him and woman who bore him.

20. But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them.

21. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between-a hawk and a buzzard.

Frances Gage's innacurate version:
23 April 1863 issue of the
New York Independent

The most common yet inaccurate rendering of Truth's speech-the one that introduced the famous phrase "Ar'n't I a woman?"-was constructed by Frances Dana Gage, nearly twelve years after the speech was given by Sojourner at the Akron conference. Gage's version first appeared in the New York Independent on April 23, 1863.

1. Well, chillen, whar dar's so much racket dar must be som'ting out o'kilter.

2. I tink dat, 'twixt de niggers of de South and de women at de Norf, all a-talking 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon.

3. But what's all this here talking 'bout?

4. Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have de best place eberywhar.

5. Nobody eber helps me into carriages or ober mud-puddles, or gives me any best place.

6. -And ar'n't I a woman?

7. (b) I have plowed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me.

8. -and ar'n't I a woman?

9. I could work as much as (c) eat as much as a man, (when (d) I could get it,) and bear de lash as well

10. -and ar'n't I a woman?

11. I have borne thirteen chillen, and seen 'em mos' all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard

12. -and ar'n't I a woman?

13. Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head.

14. What dis dey call it?

15. Dat's it, honey.

16. What's dat got to do with women's rights or niggers' rights?

17. (e) If my cup won't hold but a pint and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have a little half-measure full?

18. Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as man 'cause Christ wa'n't a woman.

19. Whar did your Christ come from?

20. Whar did your Christ come from?

21. (g)Man had nothing to do with him.

22. If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all her one lone, all dese togeder ought to be able to turn it back and git it right side up again, and now dey is asking to, de men better let 'em.

23. Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now ole Sojourner ha'n't got nothin' more to say.

Click on the red arrow below to hear the original transcription of Sojourner's 1851 speech.

Listen to the original Marius Robinson 1851 historically correct transcription of Truth's "Ain't I a woman" speech.

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Compare the Speeches - The Sojourner Truth Project

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Below are the two main written versions of Sojourner's speech. The original, on the left, was delivered by Sojourner and transcribed by Marius Robinson, a journalist, who was in the audience at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851.

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PARIS -- French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Édouard Philippe's approval ratings have hit new lows as "yellow vest" activists prepare for further anti-government demonstrations across France.

The yellow vest protests, which began in mid-November over planned fuel tax hikes, have grown into a broad rebellion against the government.

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PARIS -- French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Édouard Philippe's approval ratings have hit new lows as "yellow vest" activists prepare for further anti-government demonstrations across France. The yellow vest protests, which began in mid-November over planned fuel tax hikes, have grown into a broad rebellion against the government.

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The Life and Death of the World's Oldest Known Spider

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The Life and Death of the World's Oldest Known Spider

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A female <em>Gaius villosus</em> Rainbow. (Courtesy of Leanda Mason)

This is the story of the oldest known spider in the world and the people who knew her. The details are compiled largely from research conducted by Barbara Main and Leanda Mason, who knew her best over nearly half a century.

She was born beneath an acacia tree in one of the few patches of wilderness left in the southwest Australian wheat belt, in an underground burrow lined with her mother's perfect silk.

Her mother had used the same silk, strong and thick, to seal the burrow's entrance against the withering heat of the summer of 1974, and against all the flying, prodding things that prowled the North Bungulla Reserve.

She lived like that, in safety and darkness, for the first six months of her life. Then one day in the rainy autumn months, her mother unsealed the tunnel, and she left.

It's likely that two or three dozen spiderlings left the burrow with her, and that nearly all of them soon died.

The 250-acre North Bungulla Reserve was surrounded completely by farmland and roads, abutting an abandoned gravel pit. Space was scarce under the leaves' protective shade, and competition was fierce. Most of the spider's siblings would be eaten by birds or lizards or cannibalized by each other, or would bake to death in the sun.

But she was fortunate. She found an unoccupied patch of earth a few feet from her mother's burrow and began to dig.

She dug an almost perfect circle straight down into the soil, just large enough to fit her body, a small fraction of an inch across. Then she lined the tunnel with silk, as her mother had lined the one in which she hatched.

For as long as she lived, this would be her only home.

She wove a silken door across the burrow's mouth, attached on one side to make a hinge. She dragged hundreds of twigs to the edge of the doorway, one by one, so that they radiated out like fan blades.

Then she went inside, closed the door and waited, likely days or even weeks, for her first real meal.

She was essentially blind but attuned to every vibration in the earth, so when she finally felt something move along the twigs - an ant or small beetle, maybe - she leaped out and pulled it in.

In this way, she caught food when it came to her, and hid from the outside when there was nothing to eat. Scientists called her Gaius villosus - one of dozens of trapdoor spider species that lived in the vanishing wilderness of the Australian wheat belt.

After a year in her burrow, in 1975, she would have felt strange, heavy vibrations on the twigs outside her door. This often meant a predator was trampling around or a large forager like a kangaroo.

This time, though, the vibrations were caused by Barbara York Main, who was standing directly over the burrow.

Main had grown up in the wheat belt, she would tell the Australian Broadcasting Corp. years later. Throughout the 20th century, farming and industrialization had destroyed almost all the wilderness in the region - leaving patches like the North Bungulla Reserve as precious sanctuaries for the tiny species that held her fascination.

"I felt an immediate affinity with small things," Main told the ABC. "I didn't have that one-on-one relationship with a kangaroo that I could with caterpillars."

Now she was a zoologist with the University of Western Australia. On that day in 1975, she knelt over the burrow, parted the twigs behind the spider's door and fixed a small metal sign into the soil.

It was engraved, "16." A few feet away, Main had marked another burrow "1," and deduced that 1 was 16's likely mother. And 24 and 30 were her likely sisters.

Main spent hours beneath the acacia tree, marking every burrow she could find. She was building a family tree of Gaius villosus, whose hold on the earth seemed so fragile and about which humans knew so little.

"It is also hoped ultimately to assemble complete case histories of several individual nests," Main told the International Congress of Arachnology in her first report in 1977, according to her written paper. "A life-cycle of perhaps twenty years notwithstanding."

But 20 years was just a guess. Among other things, she would later tell the ABC, "I wanted to know how long the spiders lived."

The briefly inspirational and ultimately depressing story of the most heroic cow in Poland

The next years were hard for the spiders. A long, dry summer in 1977 wiped out a third of one year's generation, Main wrote. Hungry quail scratched open nests. A scorpion even invaded one burrow.

Still, 16 survived and grew larger, expanding her burrow every year, until it was as wide as a dime, then a quarter, and larger still.

Gaius villosus was a resilient species, Main wrote when she published her first major paper on the project, in the Bulletin of the British Arachnological Society in 1978. "Although adult nests frequently have their doors and twig-lines torn off (presumably by birds) none appear to have been seriously affected by this. The spiders reattach their doors, sometimes upside down or back-to-front and attach new twig-lines."

She had tagged and mapped 101 villosus burrows by then, all within a few meters of each other, near the edge of the old gravel pit.

Main was impressed by how long the spiders seemed to live. Based on her estimates from their tunnel diameters and sporadic observations she had made before the study, she believed two matriarchs were at least 16 years old.

"They might be 18 or 20!" she added.

Main mentioned spider 16 only in passing in this early paper. She was only 4 years old and nothing special, yet.

A kangaroo wouldn't hop - so zoo visitors stoned it to death

One day toward the end of the 1970s, spider 16 made a rare excursion to her front yard. She wove a sort of welcome mat outside her door - a net laced with pheromones, which Main would compare to a tea doily.

Then she went back down and closed the door - waiting this time not for the skittering of prey, but for the knock of a male caller.

Main wrote in her paper about the very different lives of male and female villosus spiders. The males left their burrows as soon as they were sexually mature - around age 6 or so - to go search for doilies and knock on doors.

The males never return to their burrows after mating, Main wrote. They wandered until they died, and all died young.

The female, however, went straight back to her burrow after sex. She sealed the door up extra tight with a finely contoured plug, crafted so precisely that it could seal out heat and rainwater, and spent the next year locked inside her home, to lay her eggs and shelter them.

VIDEO: Nightmarish, deadly spiders hatch in Australia

The next autumn, she unsealed the burrow and sent her children off into the world, to live or die as they could.

These matriarchs were the secret to villosus spider's success in such an arid environment, Main noted. In their deep bunkers, they could survive droughts and fires on the surface. They could mate every few years, and continually replenish the spider population.

But even Main did not guess how much 16 would overachieve.

She spun, fed, spun and fed, and probably produced many generations of young in between many hardships. A swarm of grasshoppers ravaged the reserve in 1991, according to a paper in Pacific Conservation Biology. An invasive plant species began to spread from the gravel pit. "Biodiversity is being reduced," the paper said.

Over the decades, spider 16's mother, siblings and countless cousins and children died. But her family tree kept growing, and each time 16's burrow was checked, the webbing and swirl of twigs looked immaculate as ever.

In 2013, an Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter named Vicki Laurie became intrigued by reports that an 84-year-old zoologist had been cataloguing a family of spiders for 40 straight years.

So Laurie traveled with Main, out to an "an unremarkable bit of scrub" in the wheat belt, and watched her work.

"We spend three hours on our knees as Barbara checks each burrow to see if it's occupied or not," Laurie reported. "She observes, with a mild air of concern, how few new trapdoor burrows there are and how unseasonably dry the reserve is."

When they reached the plaque of spider 16, Laurie was skeptical that it had really been occupied by the same spider for the last four decades. But Main explained that females never left their burrows until they died, and no other spider ever moved in.

Main flipped open the door with a small knife, and through Laurie, 16 was introduced to the world.

"Inside, I can just see the spider, which has pulled a veil of silk lining half across its burrow," Laurie recalled in her report. "Under my breath, I introduce myself and wish her well."

It was around this time that an undergraduate student, Leanda Mason, began to accompany Main on her excursions to the reserve.

To Mason, who was studying to be an ecologist, the reserve looked like an Eden in the blight of industrialized southwest Australia - teeming with species that might not be around much longer.

By now, Main had catalogued hundreds of spiders. Generation after generation. But on each excursion, Mason told The Washington Post, they would beeline directly to 16's door, to visit the spider that never seemed to die.

This became a tradition. On 16's 40th birthday, Mason said, she asked if she could give the spider a mealworm.

"Barbara wouldn't let me," she said. "It interfered with the study."

Main's plan of cataloguing a family of spiders having succeeded far beyond her expectations, and she began to look forward to the project's end.

"She was going to finish the study when number 16 died," Mason said. "She was going to write it up as a big thing."

Instead, she said, Main's health declined before the spider's.

The zoologist retired last year, in her late 80s, and Mason, now studying for her doctorate in ecology at Curtin University, took over the spider study.

On Oct. 31, 2016, she went out to the reserve with a drone, hoping to get a bird's-eye view of how this small rectangle of bushland was holding up against the roads and fields.

But like her mentor before her, she went straight to 16 first.

When she arrived at the clearing that day, she noticed that the twigs around the door had lost their meticulous spiral fan shape. They lay scattered in disarray.

Mason looked at the silk door, and saw a tiny hole in the center, as if something had pierced it.

She lifted the door and lowered an endoscope into the burrow, and confirmed what she already suspected. The spider was gone.

A parasitic wasp had likely broken through the seal, and laid its eggs in 16's body.

"She was cut down in her prime," Mason said. "It took a while to sink in, to be honest."

On April 19, Mason, Main and Grant Wardell-Johnson co-published a paper in Pacific Conservation Biology, announcing the death of spider 16 at age 43.

She was the oldest spider known to have existed, Mason wrote, eclipsing the previous record set by a 28-year-old tarantula.

"We can be inspired by an ancient mygalomorph spider and the rich biodiversity she embodied," she wrote, beside a photo of a perfect hole beneath a tree - nearly half a century of work: Main's, hers and the spider's.

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The extraordinary life and death of the world's oldest known spider

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This is the story of the oldest known spider in the world and the people who knew her. The details are compiled largely from research conducted by Barbara Main and Leanda Mason, who knew her best over nearly half a century.

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The Best in Interactive Multimedia Journalism 2017: Pushing the Limits of Storytelling

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2017 was quite the year, for better or for worse, and brought with it a wide range of incredible journalism. But it also was a prolific…

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Penny Kittle's Writing Inspiration Padlet

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writing education literacy reading "mentor texts" english

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Each Mini Moves for Writers video teaches you how to use one professional writing move that will enhance your writing style, argumentation, voice, grammar, or organization. Check out just one to help you master a specific move, or watch multiple videos to make your writing into a professional masterpiece.

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6th Grade Cycle 2 Digital Planner Lessons for STAAR Review

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Cycle 2 Week 4
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A brief introduction to grammar

Grammar is the collection of rules and conventions that make languages go. This section is about Standard American English, but there's something here for everyone.

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A brief introduction to grammar

Grammar is the collection of rules and conventions that make languages go. This section is about Standard American English, but there's something here for everyone.

Start learning

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Grammar | Arts and humanities | Khan Academy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Grammar is the collection of rules and conventions that makes languages go. This section is about Standard American English, but there's something here for everyone.