untrialled beta activity from the extinction unit of the wikiedscience curriculum © science upd8 at...

Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk This page may have been changed from the original

Mammoths Part 1: Extinct!A teaching sequence from the

Extinction unit of upd8 wikid, the online 11-14 curriculum from upd8

Untrialled version 1.0 May 2008

This activity is at ‘beta’ stage, for trialling and evaluation purposes only. It may need some modifications to work

fully in the classroom.

Please look out for revised version 2.0, available fromwww.upd8.org.uk

Untrialled Beta activity from the Forensics unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk

This page may have been changed from the original

Highlights of this sequence

•An investigation with the help of real scientists from around the globe - covering hard parts of How Science Works

•Criterion-referenced formative assessment tasks•Engaging practical work•Teaches interpreting of graphs in context•Students can share their assignments on our Planet TV website

Simulated pollen samples let students deduce the effect of climate change on

plants.

ELABORATE

Interpreting graphs to see the roller coaster

ride that Earth’s average temperature

has taken

EXTEND

Students take on the role of Simi - a trainee

reporter at the scene of an important find.

ENGAGE

What could have changed 10,000 years

ago to make mammoths go

extinct?

ELICIT

Simi interviews world experts and

weighs up the evidence.

EXPLORE

Climate change affects what grows where.

Species can but if the changes are too quick

go extinct.

EXPLAIN

Peer-assessedHW tests mastery of the important factual

knowledge.

EVALUATE

7E Learning cycle

Untrialled Beta activity from the Forensics unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk


The following is a short extract from the ‘engage, elicit and explore’ parts of the 1st of 2 activities.

N.B. The dialogue of these slides is animated – click on ‘spacebar’ for each speech bubble to appear

Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections2Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk This page may have been changed from the original

Engage Elicit Explore Explain Elaborate Extend Evaluate

Hi, I’m Lauren Lox from Planet TV.

You must be Simi, the new reporter. Welcome to Siberia!

Julian asked me to look after you.

There’s an icy wind here but I can

hardly feel it with the excitement. People are

calling it the discovery of the century. A reindeer

herder found it.

Look! What do you think it is?



I have never seen anything like it before – no one has.

It is a baby mammoth. They died out 10,000

years ago.

I ‘d say it’s a metre high and it must

weigh about twice as much as you do. It must have

been frozen for all this time.

Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections4Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk


But how do we know what

it looked like?

Its parents would have looked like this – 3m tall and 6 tonnes in

weight – that’s bigger than

an elephant.

Hold on, it’s Julian on the line

for you.

Good question. Scientists based this reconstruction on

their fossilised skeletons.




Capture the mood for our listeners.

Inspire some awe and wonder!

Hello Simi – Julian Shouter here, your

editor. Are you at the scene yet? We’ve decided to run a live

report on the discovery. I want you to describe

the excitement for viewers.



The atmosphere here is…

Let me describe the scene...

This discovery means that…

Simi, you’ll be doing a 20 second piece-to-camera in a moment.

I suggest you make 3 points.



But why did the species go extinct? Is it a ‘Who dunnit?’ or a

‘What dunnit?’and could it happen to other

animals?

What could have

wiped them out?



Quick Simi! Help me create some

graphics for the report.Here is Europe as it

is now.

Paris 2008



Now imagine going back 15,000

years. What was Europe like then? Help me

draw ...

... what it looked like from

the air?

... what I would see around me?

The following pages are extracts from the ‘explore’ part of the activity.

They are evidence cards with real quotes from scientists around the globe

Mammoths: Extinct! Explore cardsUntrialled Beta activity from the Forensics unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk



I used evidence from fossils to show

that more species went extinct when

average temperatures were higher.

The same thing could happen

in future if temperatures

rise.

Dr Peter Mayhew: York, UK

1

Mammoths: Extinct! Explore cardsUntrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at www.upd8.org.uk This page may have been changed from the original


This is the mammoth bone hut I

am working on in Gontsy (Ukraine). I am excavating mammoth bone huts since 1976. In Eastern Europe, more than 30 huts are

found in 11 places.

Dr Lioudmila Iakovleva: Kiev, Ukraine

They were built 14-15,000 years ago using a

mixture of old bones and bones from freshly killed animals. The museum

in Kiev has a reconstruction that shows you what it was like.

3a



5a

I study preserved bones

like this one from a bison’s leg.

Professor Alan Cooper, Adelaide, Australia

Bison numbers crashed between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago and many other large

mammals became extinct then.



Dr David Nogue´s-Bravo, Madrid, Spain

9aI study the way

climate change has affected animals in the past. For the

mammoths project I worked with 4 other scientists so we

could share our knowledge and skills.

Our findings help us to predict what will

happen in future. I hope that we can all help to limit the

damage that climate change causes.

Can you see from these

diagrams what we found out?



Dr Barbara Silva: London, UK

8aThe climate has a big effect on what grows in different

parts of the world.

We use fossils and pollen to identify

the plants that grew in the past, and then deduce

what the climate was like.

This is me digging up part of a

fossilised tree.

untrialled beta activity from the extinction unit of the wikiedscience curriculum © science upd8 at...

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