This activity is part of the Extinction Stinks! unit. 

• Ask: What are some reasons that cause species to become endangered or extinct?
• Use a think-pair-share strategy to have students brainstorm and share their ideas.  
• Possible responses include:
• Overharvesting
• Habitat loss
• Poaching and illegal hunting
• Climate change
• Pollution
• Record students’ responses on a whiteboard or a piece of butcher paper at the front of the room. Collect all of their responses for now, regardless of whether or not they may be a major cause of extinction.
• Ask students to predict which of these factors are most important to the Sumatran rhino becoming endangered. Ask them to support their claim using what they learned from SOS—Saving our Species.

• Display or distribute the Vanishing Populations Map to students.  Prompt students to explore the map, then ask them to identify the major pieces of information they can gather from the map. Record their responses on the board. These might include:
• Sumatran rhino populations decreased 70 percent in the last 20 years.
• Poaching is the major cause of the species’ decline.
• Populations are small in number (5-50) and spread out across several islands in small, isolated fragments.

• Show the Saving the Sumatran Rhino (5:26 minutes), prompting students to focus on what specific factors led to the Sumatran rhino becoming endangered.
• After playing the video, direct students to revisit their brainstorm list and claim about the Sumatran rhino from Step 1. 
• They may want to add new reasons why animals become endangered now that they have more information specific to the Sumatran rhino.
• Ask students if their original prediction for what most threatens the Sumatran Rhino was correct or incorrect.
• Emphasize the factors discussed in the video and map: geographic isolation, habitat destruction, poaching, and a slow gestation rate.

• Distribute the Understanding Extinction handout to students. Explain that they will complete Part I by writing about the cause and effect of three factors that have led the Sumatran rhino closer to extinction.
• Have students work individually or with a partner to develop their scientific argument about why the three factors threaten the Sumatran rhino, using a Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (C-E-R) format. 
• Students may want to watch the Saving the Sumatran Rhino video one more time, once they have identified their claims to provide the evidence they need for their arguments.
• Although only words are required, images may also be helpful in supporting students’ C-E-R statements.
• Have students complete the reflection question at the end of Part I on the Understanding Extinction handout and share their ideas.       
• Possible responses include:
• Promote captive breeding programs and reintroductions.
• Protect land from deforestation and restoring habitat.
• Monitor protected areas and enforcing regulations to reduce poaching.
• This question prompts students to consider possible conservation solutions for dealing with issues, which is important preparation for the final product of the Extinction Stinks! unit. 

This activity is part of the Extinction Stinks! unit. 
 

• Ask students what they think the term “biodiversity” means. 
• Break down the word into its two parts: “bio,” meaning life, and “diversity,” meaning variety and difference.
• Define biodiversity for students: “all the different kinds of living organisms within a certain area.”
• Show the Penguins of Patagonia video (4:31) as an example of biodiversity in coastal Argentina. 
• In the video, Explorer Pablo Borboroglu defines biodiversity and uses it as one measurement of ecosystem resilience—how well the ecosystem can persist through disturbances. Have students listen for specific benefits of biodiversity that are identified in the video.
• After watching the video, lead a discussion with students about the benefits of biodiversity they heard. List them on the board for future reference.

• Review the definition of the term ecosystem from the SOS—Saving Our Species activity.
• Explain that within an ecosystem, organisms are categorized based on how they gain the energy they need.
• Producers create their own food, often using energy from the sun. All plants, as well as some microorganisms like cyanobacteria, are producers.
• Consumers eat producers or other consumers. Consumers are usually categorized by their typical diet: herbivores eat primarily plants, carnivores eat primarily meat, and omnivores eat a combination of plants, meat, and fungi.
• Decomposers gain their energy from dead and decaying organisms. 
• Display the Who’s in My Backyard? food web infographic. 
• Ask students to predict what they think the arrows in the diagram represent.
• Explain that arrows show how energy moves between species—the arrow points in the direction of energy flow from one organism to another.
• Explain to students that they will model a food web using organisms that live in the Sumatran rhino’s ecosystem. Each student will receive a role for the activity of one organism or other factor that is a part of the food web.
• Display the Vanishing Populations Map used in The Roots of Extinction activity. Point out Way Kambas National Park, the ecosystem that is home to the organisms used in this model ecosystem. This is also the place where the Sumatran Rhino Rescue site is located.
• Distribute the Way Kambas Food Web Cards (one card to each student) with an organism typically found in Way Kambas National Park.     
• Have students organize themselves in a few ways to have some fun and get oriented with who is in the ecosystem. Some ideas include:
• Line up by size (have them make their best guess!).
• Organize into groups by producers, consumers, decomposers, and anything else.
• Organize so every organism is standing next to another organism that it has a direct energy relationship with—either giving or receiving energy to each other.
• Then prompt students to follow the steps below to build a model of the relationships between species. 
• Distribute the pieces of yarn so that each student has at least three or four pieces.
• Have students stand in a circle with their cards facing outwards. 
• Students should take several pieces of yarn and use them to connect to others in the circle from whom they receive energy. For some, this will be just one source and for others this can be many different sources.
• Producers will all connect to the sun. 
• Consumers will connect to several examples of the organisms they eat as food.
• Decomposers should connect to several organisms they might eat.
• Once everyone has connected to the species they are related to, point out to students that there are many relationships within the ecosystem that overlap with each other. 

• Distribute the Way Kambas Food Web Model handout to students. 
• Prompt students to complete Part A by creating a food web model using a subset of the organisms from Way Kambas National Park.

• Have students retake their positions in the yarn-based model of the relationships between species, then use each of the Way Kambas Food Web Disruption Cards to introduce four different scenarios to the ecosystem. When each disruption happens, pause and prompt students to reflect on how that change would affect different species within the ecosystem using the questions printed on the card.
• After disruptions #1 and #2, reset the food web before continuing with the next scenario.
• After disruption #3, do not reset the ecosystem. Ask students to predict how an additional disruption might affect the ecosystem differently after already experiencing the impacts of this challenge. Then, complete disruption #4 with a reduced population of organisms in the ecosystem.
• After the disruptions are over, ask students to complete Part B of the Way Kambas Food Web Model handout and then consider how biodiversity affects the survival of the Sumatran rhino. Their ideas may include:
• More species in an ecosystem allow for different sources of energy.
• When species' numbers are depleted, the lower number of ecological relationships decreases an ecosystem’s resilience after a disruptive event.
• Biodiversity allows increased numbers of relationships between species, strengthening the resilience of the ecosystem.

• Distribute the class Know & Need to Know chart from the Saving Our Species—SOS activity.
• Direct students to add new information they have learned about biodiversity through this activity. Examples may include:
• Biodiversity is one measure of the health of an ecosystem supporting an endangered species.
• Decreases in biodiversity might increase the risk of a species going endangered or extinct.
• Species in an ecosystem affect each other even when they are not directly connected through an energy transfer.
• Students can also add new questions or ideas they have related to conserving endangered species while also protecting the needs of humans and other species.

This activity is part of the Extinction Stinks! unit. 
 

• Have students read through the first section of the National Wildlife Federation's Ecosystem Services article. Then have a few volunteer to read about the different types of services listed out loud for the class.
• Ask: How would you explain “ecosystem services” to a younger child?
• Guide students to produce specific explanations or metaphors so that you can assess students’ understanding of the concept.    
• Ask: What are some examples of ecosystem services provided by the area around our school? Into which category of ecosystem service does each example fall? 
• Examples may include: regulating services such as trees providing shade on a hot day or vegetation filtering and regulating water flow in the schoolyard, or cultural services such as improved student mental health from nature on the school grounds.
• Ask: Do you think the ecosystem services provided by some ecosystems are more important than others? Why or why not?
• Students may say that ecosystem services that provide essential life-sustaining resources for humans or wildlife, such as water purification and life-saving medicine, are more important, while others may argue that they are all equally important. 
• Point out that these will be important considerations when writing their final grant proposals for the Extinction Stinks! unit project. 

• Remind students of the Sumatran rhino’s ecosystem. Have students predict some of the ecosystem services the forest habitat likely provides. These may include:
• Water filtration
• Species that could be used for medicine
• Tourism
• Storing resources like water or carbon
• Organize students into small groups and give each group one set of the Way Kambas Ecosystem Services Cards. 
• Each card has a specific ecosystem service provided by rainforest ecosystems like that of Way Kambas National Park. Direct students to organize them into the category of ecosystem service that it provides: regulating, provisioning, cultural, or supporting.
• Circulate and elicit students’ thinking by asking why cards are in particular categories. 
• After all groups have sorted their cards, ask students to share a few of their categories. If students disagree, discuss why each group made their choice and see if students can reach a consensus.

• Hand back students’ Understanding Extinction handouts from the end of The Roots of Extinction activity. 
• In Part II of the handout, have students connect the factors they identified as threats to the Sumatran rhino to the ecosystem services provided by and biodiversity of the rainforest ecosystem.
• Using your own example, model how to fill out a row of the table. For instance, cutting down trees from the rainforest increases the provisioning services accessed by the local human community, but decreases Sumatran rhino habitat. It also decreases overall biodiversity because vegetation has decreased.
• Direct students to answer the guiding questions in Part II and then prompt a few volunteers to share out their responses with the class. Emphasize that there are many ways that the Sumatran rhino’s survival relates to ecosystem services and local biodiversity, all of which need to be taken into account when designing possible conservation solutions to support its survival.

• Retrieve the class Know & Need to Know chart created in the SOS—Saving Our Species activity.
• Lead a class discussion to update the chart to reflect students’ current understanding. Some responses might include:
• The ecosystems endangered species live in may provide essential ecosystem services that are in conflict with conservation of the species.
• Ecosystem services may also only be maintained when endangered species are conserved, adding to the argument for species conservation projects.

• Remind students that the essential question for the unit is “How can we prevent a species from going extinct while also meeting the needs of humans and other local species?” 
• Distribute the Lesson 1 Assessment handout. Students must make a claim supported by evidence and reasoning about how these four groups of organisms will be affected by a significant loss of vegetation:
• Sumatran rhinos
• Other herbivores
• Carnivores
• Humans/ecosystem services
• Use the Lesson 1 Assessment Rubric to evaluate students’ arguments.

• Introduce the six potential target species that students can study during the species-specific part of the unit project:
• Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) 
• Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog (Rana sierrae) 
• Mekong giant catfish (Pangasianodon gigas) 
• Transient killer whales (Orcinus orca) 
• Cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) 
• Northern spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina)
• Have students rank their preferences. 
• You could choose to have students write their top three preferences on a piece of paper, use an online form, or assign species groups randomly. 
• Students will receive their species assignment in the next activity of the unit: Challenges Faced by Endangered Species.