How to use this experience in the classroom

Initial thoughts on how to use what we are learning in our classroom next year:

I am constantly thinking about how to share this incredible experience with our students next year. I can picture the simple hooks like having a picture of Baby Sam on my screen saver knowing that a baby elephant picture is a great way to get them to look at the board. But, in all seriousness, how can we use our experience and the intensive work and conservation model of Think Elephants International to inspirer our students to take on a species of their choice to advocate for.

As of right now, we are imagining that we will start off the year by explaining the basic biology of Asian Elephants. Their role in their larger ecosystem, threats to their survival, and conservation efforts. Ideally our students would then choose an animal that is a threatened keystone species that they track throughout the year. I am imagining that when we go over the eight characteristics of life, students will go into detail about how there chosen species meets each of these criteria. When we discuss human genetics, students can compare and contrast the number of chromosomes, inherited and acquired traits and whether their species is domestic, captive or wild.

I can envision anatomical comparison as well during our human body systems unit. Reproduction comparisons would be fascinating, as well as parenting styles of their species, but then maybe they can pick one other system to compare and contrast. For example it might be more appropriate for a student focusing on a daulphin to compare their brains and cognition to humans, while a student focusing on a shark might want to compare and contrast the skeletal or respiratory systems.

Right now, we are just in the dreaming stage. Something I, Karon, am very good at. Fortunately Connie does a great job of turning my lofty brainstorms into a meaningful project, and Kim, the other part of our department, is outstanding at word smithing and formatting all of the task in a way that parents and students know what it is we are trying to communicate.