Positives

• The lesson plan includes discussion questions, learning outcomes, background knowledge, a list of materials, and an in-depth, step-by-step guide to each activity.
• The reading comprehension tasks, vocabulary cards, critical thinking exercises, and group work will get students using their communication and critical thinking skills.

Additional Prerequisites

• This lesson requires 4 to 6 50-minute lessons to complete, but some sections could be used as stand-alone activities.
• You will need to create a free account to access the lesson plan and materials.
• All accompanying materials are only available through Google drive.
• There may be ads before the videos.
• Before starting the lesson, students should have some knowledge of extinct species and understand the fossil record, genetic variability, natural selection, and speciation.

Differentiation

• Extension activities are available at the end of the lesson plan for students interested in furthering their knowledge of extinction.
• Images in some of the student documents will use a lot of ink if printed. Alternatively, you can print one set of images per group or project them for the class.
• Have students consider the role that anthropogenic climate change is playing in biodiversity loss and species extinctions.
• To provide more background knowledge about extinction, use this video about the fossil record and extinction or this video on the sixth mass extinction.
• History classes can use portions of this lesson to connect to geographic distributions of human civilizations of the past and present, human-caused extinctions or near-extinctions in recent history (e.g., the passenger pigeon, dodo bird, bison, Atlantic cod, rhinos, etc), or to the differing ability of previous civilizations to colonize and change the planet.