View the video ̢ĺŰĺĎSquid Spawning̢ĺŰĺ to learn about the short life of the opalescent squid. Complete additional activities to further investigate the habitats and adaptations of squid and their relatives.

This learning sequence is anchored in the phenomena: Salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest are declining.

Part of the job of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is to figure out why salmon populations are declining and create plans for how to help increase fish populations. Throughout this unit, students will engage with the phenomenon of Pacific salmon population decline as they explore salmonid species and discover how WDFW raises healthy fish in hatcheries.

Students will explore salmonid life cycles and discover patterns among life cycles of plants and animals who interact with salmon. Students will then learn what makes healthy habitats for salmon. They will evaluate solutions to the problems of salmon migration above and below dams and examine salmons’ role in a healthy river system. Students will embark on a virtual field trip (in person field trips also available) to a WDFW fish hatchery to learn about current practices in hatchery management and identify ways the hatchery meets the habitat needs of fish. Finally, students will be called to work as an engineering team and help develop a tool to support salmon recovery by working as conservation engineers.

Explorarás al aire libre en busca de evidencia de la vida animal e imaginando qué tipos de animales podrían vivir y sobrevivir en esa área.Esta actividad fue creada por Out Teach (out-teach.org), una organización sin fines de lucro que proporciona aprendizaje experiencial al aire libre, con el objetivo de transformar la educación de las ciencias para los estudiantes en comunidades más desatendidas.

The planet’s most endangered wolf is the red wolf, with only one wild population, a nonessential experimental group established in eastern North Carolina, of 15-17 individuals in existence as of 2022. The story of the red wolf is rich in history, dating back to the early 20th century wolf exterminations to the red wolf recovery program launched in 1967. Now, there are new issues on the rise. Shortly after the peak of success with the recovery program, red wolf numbers experienced a sharp decline due to human-caused mortality and hybridization with coyotes. This course seeks to understand the historical and modern events leading to the current state of the red wolf and prompts investigation into different restoration methods to form suggestions for the next best course of action. This lesson plan was created as part of an independent study in restoration ecology with Professor Marja Bakermans.

In this Adaptation Name Game, students sitting or standing in a circle play a version of tag, with one person in the center. When a person in the circle says another person’s name, the person in the center of the circle tries to touch the person whose name was said, before they can say someone else’s name. Later, students pause to brainstorm strategies to improve their performance, then play some more. Students learn that this was a representation of how certain structures and behaviors help organisms survive in their habitat, and that these are adaptations that species inherit over time. This game helps students learn each other’s names, while “lightly” introducing them to what adaptations are. Note: This activity is only an introduction; to gain any meaningful understanding of the topic, students will need more adaptation-focused activities, such as Adaptations Intro-Live!, Structures & Behaviors, and Related & Different, which engage students more deeply in understanding the concept through interactions with real organisms.

Our PBL project is about zoo habitats! A guest speaker, from the Indianapolis Zoo, is coming to our classroom to give the students an idea about how the zoo works and how the animals live. In preparation for their trip to the zoo, the students will do some research on different animals and their habitats that will see on their visit. After their trip, the students will prepare a presentation on the zoo habitats compared to their habitats in the wild. After their presentation, the students are going to make a book including what they learned and any improvements they have for the zoo. We will send that book to our guest speaker.