Project Title: Save the Elephants
Mission:
How can we help save elephants from extinction?
Culminating / Take Action Project
Write a persuasive letter to Congress to advocate for conservation funding. This project includes a piece of art to help make the letter stand out.
What Kids Learn
Elephants are amazing creatures. They are also in grave danger and in need of support. Elephants form groups, care for each other, show empathy and have amazing features. They have super hearing that lets them hear sounds over long distances, sounds people can’t hear, and they care for each other. But elephants are threatened by people. They experience habit loss, poaching and conflict with humans over land. About 96 elephants in Africa are killed everyday.
In this project, students learn about life science standards related to animal grouping and life cycles, they also learn about sound waves and light through the context of elephant hearing and eyesight.
Overview
Life Habit Focus: Empathy
Subject: Life science, physical science, ELA
Grade: 3-5
Topic: Habitat, life cycle, sound and waves
Project preview
Project Materials
Project Module
Student Notebook
Teacher's Guide
Materials List
Virtual Field Trips
One of our goals is to help kids connect what they are learning in our projects to the real world beyond the classroom. To do that, we’ve partnered with experts to help students learn from and virtually visit with experts from around the world. The Save the Elephant project partners with:
The Birmingham Zoo
Students visit the Birmingham Zoo to discover how their elephant Bulwagi helped design a radio tracker to protect elephants in the wild.
Senator Tony Vargas
Students learn from Nebraska State Senator, Tony Vargas. Students learn about what it means to be an elected official and how to effectively write letters to representatives in office.
Aligned Standards
Common Core Reading (CCSS):
- W.1: Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
- R.5: Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
- R.6: Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
NGSS Standards:
- 3-LS2-1: Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive
- 3-LS1-1: Develop models to describe that organisms have unique and diverse life cycles but all have in common birth, growth, reproduction, and death.
- 4-PS4-1: Develop a model of waves to describe patterns in terms of amplitude and wavelength and that waves can cause objects to move.
- 5-ESS3-1: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
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