This resource is a searchable database with images, graphs, and interactive maps that provide detailed information about nearly 150,000 species.
Students are able to search or browse for their favorite plants and animals and learn about their current status, taxonomy, geographic range, habitat, threats they face, population trends, if they are used or traded by humans, conservation actions (if applicable), and vulnerability to extinction.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This resource is a wealth of data and information about species; there is so much potential for student learning.
Maps, photographs, and graphs are used well and will help visual learners.
Additional Prerequisites
Younger students may struggle reading scientific vocabulary on their own.
Students should have an understanding of taxonomy, extinction, habitats, and conservation.
Differentiation
Consider beginning with the short video in the "About" section, which is an excellent introduction to the list.
This resource would be a powerful database to use in a culminating activity about biodiversity, ecology, or endangered species and the natural solutions to climate change that also benefit life on Earth.
Students can work individually or in groups to assess one or more species. They can create conservation materials or present their findings to the class in a jigsaw activity.
In elementary classes, this resource would be a great whole-class activity to learn more about a specific species, habitats, or environmental changes.
Other related resources include this video about the current and historic rates of extinction, this video about the importance of biodiversity, and this article about human impacts on wild animals.
Scientist Notes
This resource presents a platform to assess species being threatened by extinction and also includes some intervention and conservation measures to reduce the scale of threat to a lower category of threat through the Red List Index evaluation. There are a few limitations, such as the inability to assess hard-to-find species; thus, vital information is lost. Due to this, there may be a problem of over-estimation and bias during investigation. In all, the resource analyzes the level of extinction of over 140,000 species from 2000-2021. This is vital to guide students on species at risk of extinction and to proffer evidence-based intervention strategies. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
HS-LS2-8 Evaluate the evidence for the role of group behavior on individual and species’ chances to survive and reproduce.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
3-LS4-4 Make a claim about the merit of a solution to a problem caused when the environment changes and the types of plants and animals that live there may change.
HS-LS4-5 Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.
Common Core Math Standards (CCSS.MATH)
Ratios & Proportional Relationships (6-7)
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.RP.A.2 Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.
