Endangered Species

Draw a picture to illustrate an endangered animal about which you are interested and concerned. Write or dictate a sentence telling about the animal. 

Have a representative from a local zoo or conservation group speak to the class about endangered animals. Allow students to ask questions of the speaker. 

Select an endangered species to research and share what you have learned about this animal through a diorama, a PowerPoint presentation, a brochure, or poster.

Create a number line that represents the heights of 5–10 endangered animals. Compare their heights.

Using a set of current and past population figures for 5 endangered species, round each number to the nearest tens or hundreds place and compare the present and past population numbers.

Research how many animals remain of any endangered species that live near your location. Write those numbers in standard, expanded and word forms, next to the animal's name. Compare these numbers to populations of similar animal species in your region that are not endangered.

All animals need food in order to live and grow. They obtain their food from plants or from other animals. Plants need water and light to live and grow. Examples of observations could include the different kinds of food needed by different types of animals and that all living things need water.

Plants and animals can change their environment. 

Living things need water, air, and resources from the land. They live in places that have the things they need. Plants, animals, and their surroundings make up a system.

Things that people do can affect the world around them. People can reduce their effects on the land, water, air, and other living things.

There are many different kinds of living things in any area, and they exist in different places. Emphasis is on the diversity of living things in each of a variety of different habitats.

Some plants depend on animals, wind, and water for pollination or to move their seeds around. Emphasis is on the interaction between animals and plant.

Reproduction is essential to the continued existence of every kind of organism. Plants and animals have unique and diverse life cycles. Changes organisms go through during their life form a pattern.

Being part of a group helps animals obtain food, defend themselves, and cope with changes. Groups may serve different functions and vary dramatically in size.

Many characteristics involve both inheritance and environment. The environment affects the traits that an organism develops.

Examples of evidence could include needs and characteristics of the animals and habitats involved. The organisms and their habitat make up a system in which the parts depend on each other.

A variety of natural hazards result from natural processes. Humans cannot eliminate natural hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts.

Examples of renewable energy resources could include wind energy, water behind dams, and sunlight; non-renewable energy resources are fossil fuels and atomic energy. Energy and fuels that are modified from natural sources affect the environment in multiple ways. Examples of environmental effects could include biological effects from moving parts, erosion, change of habitat, and pollution.

Some kinds of plants and animals that once lived on Earth are no longer found anywhere. Fossils provide evidence about the types of organisms that lived long ago and also about the nature of their environments. Examples of data could include type, size, and distributions of fossil organisms.  Examples of fossils and environments could include marine fossils found on dry land.

Populations of animals are classified by their characteristics. An example of cause and effect relationships could be that  animals that have better camouflage coloration than other animals may be more likely to survive and therefore more likely to leave offspring.

Populations live in a variety of habitats, and change in those habitats affects the organisms living there. When the environment changes in ways that affect a place’s physical characteristics, temperature, or availability of resources, some organisms survive and reproduce, others move to new locations, yet others move into the transformed environment, and some die. Examples of environmental changes could include changes in land characteristics, water distribution, temperature, food, and other organisms.

The food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants. Organisms are related in food webs in which some animals eat plants for food and other animals eat the animals that eat plants. Decomposition eventually restores (recycles) some materials back to the soil.  Organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. A healthy ecosystem is one in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs in a relatively stable web of life. Newly introduced species can damage the balance of an ecosystem.  

Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, and air. Individuals and communities can often mitigate these effects through innovation and technology.

Organisms, and populations of organisms, are dependent on their environmental interactions both with other living things and with nonliving factors. In any ecosystem, organisms and populations with similar requirements for food, water, oxygen, or other resources may compete with each other for limited resources, access to which consequently constrains their growth and reproduction. Growth of organisms and population increases are limited by access to resources. Emphasis is on cause and effect relationships between resources and growth of individual organisms and the numbers of organisms in ecosystems during periods of abundant and scarce resources.

Predatory interactions may reduce the number of organisms or eliminate whole populations of organisms. Mutually beneficial interactions, in contrast, may become so interdependent that each organism requires the other for survival. Although the species involved in competitive, predatory, and mutually beneficial interactions vary across ecosystems, the patterns of interactions of organisms with their environments are shared. Emphasis is on predicting consistent patterns of interactions in different ecosystems in terms of the relationships among and between organisms.

Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations. Emphasis is on recognizing patterns in data and making warranted inferences about changes in populations, and on evaluating empirical evidence supporting arguments about changes to ecosystems.

Biodiversity describes the variety of species found in Earth's terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. The completeness or integrity of an ecosystem's biodiversity is often used as a measure of its health. Changes in biodiversity can influence humans’ resources as well as ecosystem services that humans rely on. There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.

Natural selection leads to the predominance of certain traits in a population, and the suppression of others. Emphasis is on using concepts of natural selection in animals, such as overproduction of offspring, passage of time, variation in a population, selection of favorable traits, and heritability of traits.

Adaptation by natural selection acting over generations is one important process by which species change over time in response to changes in environmental conditions. Traits that support successful survival and reproduction in the new environment become more common; those that do not become less common.  

Human activities can positively and negatively influence the biosphere, sometimes altering natural habitats and ecosystems. Examples of the design process include examining human interactions and designing feasible solutions that promote stewardship. Examples can include water usage (such as stream and river use, aquifer recharge, or dams and levee construction); land usage (such as urban development, agriculture, wetland benefits, stream reclamation, or fire restoration); and pollution (such as of the air, water, or land).

Technology and engineering can potentially help us best manage natural resources as populations increase. Examples of evidence include grade-appropriate databases on human populations and the rates of consumption of food and natural resources (such as freshwater, mineral, and energy). Examples of effects can include changes made to the appearance, composition, and structure of Earth’s systems as well as the rates at which they change. 

Current scientific models indicate that human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion, can contribute to the present-day measured rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature. Examples of evidence can include tables, graphs, and maps of global and regional temperatures; atmospheric levels of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane; and natural resource use. Natural activities, such as changes in incoming solar radiation, also contribute to changing global temperatures.