Introduction
You probably know that human is only one of the thousands of species living on our planet. In an ideal ecosystem, all the species of our planet would co-exist happily with each other. Alas, did you know that existence of many of these species, both plants and animals, is threatened, mostly by the actions of the most dominant species of the planet, which is no other than the human?
In this webquest you will learn about the endangered animals of our planet, the reasons they are at risk of becoming extinct and the actions that are being taken to prevent this from happening. You will also select endangered animals living in different parts of our planet and you will collect interesting information about them in order to post a relevant article on your school's blog.
On the top of the website
- Visit Task to learn about the goals of this webquest
- Visit Process to begin the webquest
- Visit Evaluation for more information about how your work will be assessed and graded
Good luck with your quest! Enjoy!
Task
By the end of this project, you will have become aware of the problem of animal endangerment. You will have understood the reasons of the problem and the contribution of humans to it. Moreover, you will be able to anticipate the global extent of the problem by studying examples of well-known endangered animals living in all 6 continents. Finally, you will have learnt about the actions that are taken all over the world to prevent animal extinction.
Throughout the project you will view educational videos and read educational material online, in order to answer a series of questions and post an article on your school's blog about endangered animals living in all the corners of the world.
Process
Step 1: Form groups of 3 according to your teacher's guidelines and create a new Microsoft Word document.
Step 2: Watch the video below about animal endagerement and test your understanding of the problem by answering the list of questions that follow.
- When is an animal endangered?
- How do animals become endangered?
- What is a habitat?
- What do animals need?
- What happened to Amur Leopard's habitat?
- What can change an animal's habitat?
- How were brown pelicans saved?
- What can people do to save endangered animals?
- What can you do to protect endangered animals?
Step 3: Visit some of the recommended websites listed below and learn about cases of animals in danger. Then, try to complete the image-oriented task that follows.
Educational Channels on YouTube:
SciShow Kids (you can watch The Problem with Pandas and Save the Rhinos!)
Kids Learning Tube (you can watch Endangered Animals/Endangered Animals Video for Children)
Other Educational Videos online:
Text-based Educational Material online:
Take a look at animal pictures below. Based on what you have already read, can you tell for each animal
(1) in which continent it lives, and
(2) whether it is endangered or not?
If you cannot find the answers for some of the animals within the online material listed above, you can use a web search engine (for example Google Search) to get access to additional sources of information. Wikipedia can also be your helper in this effort. The Wikipedia entry for most species lists the conservation status of the species (that is the extend to which the species is considered endangered) on the top right part of the webpage.
Step 4: Based on the research you have already made, visiting the links above (Step 3), each group has to focus on one continent and choose an animal living in that continent that may become extinct in the near future. You should find as much information as possible about that animal, such as:
- where they live,
- what they eat,
- how long they live,
- why they are threatened,
- how many of them are left,
- interesting facts about them and
- a picture of them.
Step 5: Using the information that you have gathered, assign roles within the group: Student 1 should write a few sentences concerning the questions 1-3 above (see Step 4), Student 2 should do the same for questions 4 and 5, while Student 3 will be responsible for writing down a few interesting facts about the chosen animal and finding a picture of it.
Step 6: Combine what you have written down in order to create an article about the chosen animal for your school's blog. Make sure it has a title and consists of 3 paragraphs. Try to avoid spelling mistakes as well as grammatical and syntactic errors.
Step 7: Post the article on your school's blog along with the picture of the animal.
Evaluation
It's evaluation time! First, you are going to grade your group with respect to writing skills and then you are going to grade your peers within the group regarding their collaborative work skills. Be careful, you will be graded by your peers too!
Download and print two evaluation rubrics bellow (PDF files). Then, complete both of them by selecting for each question the answer that applies.
Conclusion
By now, you should have familiarized yourself with the important problem of animal endangerment.
Thank you for participating in this project! Hopefully, you have learnt a lot of new interesting facts about endangered animals and enjoyed yourselves working as a group along the way!