The Road to Extinction

• In this lesson, students learn about the relationships between extinction, evolution, and biodiversity by investigating previous mass extinction events, learning about the current mass extinction, and participating in many interactive activities.
• Through discussions, videos, research, and readings, students examine the causes of extinction events, how they impact biodiversity, how species have adapted to human pressures, and what can be done to limit the loss of biodiversity on Earth today.

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.