Instructional Software Lesson Idea

Lesson Title The Wolves of Yellowstone National Park

Content Area Environmental Science 9th or 10th Grade

Content Standards SEV2. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to construct

explanations of stability and change in Earth’s ecosystems.
d. Construct an argument to support a claim about the value of biodiversity in
ecosystem residence including keystone, invasive, native, endemic, indicator,
and endangered species.
Technology Standards 3d. Students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and
problems, developing ideas and theories, and pursuing answers and
solutions.

Integrated Technology EdPuzzle

Yellowstone Park Website
Type of Instructional E-book/e-reference
Software Drill and practice
Software Feature Intermittent Questioning, Accessible outside of School Day, Able to be used
on mobile devices
Reference or Additional Reading
Supporting Resources https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-
changes-ecosystem/
EdPuzzle
https://edpuzzle.com/media/6137a9990973d6415ba52522

Bloom’s Taxonomy Understanding

Levels Analyzing
Integration Level Level 4: Integration

Universal Design WHAT: This lesson will help to connect information learned in past units to
Rationale the current unit.
WHY: While teaching this lesson there will be a point where they can be
honest and have real conversations about what happened in the past and
why reintroduction was so important.
HOW: By creating the multimedia book they are creating a real product about
an animal of their choice and why that animal is crucial to the success of their
habitat.
Lesson Idea This lesson will be introduced in the biodiversity unit of environmental
science. Students will be shown why biodiversity is important in an ecosystem
and what the impact of removing one species can do to the entire ecosystem
good or bad. Students will go through a self-paced video about the
reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and how that
reintroduction helped to balance out their ecosystem and the booming Elk
population. While students are going through the video and answering the
questions that are spaced throughout, the teacher is available for extra help
and clarification of concepts and ideas while they are watching and analyzing.
This will be introduced to students through reactivating their prior knowledge
about food webs, order of consumerism, and energy flow as class is starting.
When they are finished with the video there is an additional reading that they
can do that shows how the affect is continually being observed to this day.
Student learning will be assessed through the final short answer question that
is sent to the teacher for their understanding of why
the wolves were so important to every part of their food web. The video will
take 10 minutes to view and answer all the questions and the post reading
 and discussion in groups about lasting impact should take 20-25 minutes.
At the end of the lesson, we will convene as a class to have a whole group
discussion on what a keystone species is and why the removal of said
species can lead to the detriment of the whole ecosystem. This will lead them
to a class project the next day where the class would create a book entitled
“What Would Happen if _______ Went Extinct?” Students would choose an
organism and find tell how the ecosystem would change if that organism was
removed. This would differentiate the learning as I can tailor book
requirements to their level of learning and understanding.
Design Reflection This will impact student learning by giving them multiple ways of digesting the
information. By having them watch the video on the gray wolves of
Yellowstone we are connecting to their audio pathways of remembering and
interpreting lessons. The reading that they would have after would help to
connect the lesson to today as it was written in the current year. This would
help to give it a place of realism so they do not think of this as something far
off because this is happening right now and will continue to have lasting
effects. This would be an extension of the lessons taught in unit 1 where we
talk about food chains, food webs, and energy flow that we talk about in unit
2. This will also be able to connect them to how human growth is also
affecting the ecosystems that we are encroaching on and how we can stop
and reverse our impact on their natural habitats.