Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Mammoths Part 1: Extinct! A teaching sequence from the Extinction unit of upd8 wikid, the online 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 from

Untrialled Beta activity from the Forensics unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at 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-assessed HW 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 page may have been changed from the original The following is a short extract from the ‘engage, elicit and explore’ parts of the 1 st 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 sections 2 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate 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?

Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections 3 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate 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 sections 4 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate 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. This page may have been changed from the original

Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections 5 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate 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.

Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections 6 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original 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.

Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections 7 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original 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?

Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections 8 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate Quick Simi! Help me create some graphics for the report. Here is Europe as it is now. Paris 2008

Mammoth: Extinct! – engage and elicit sections 9 Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluate 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 cards Untrialled Beta activity from the Forensics unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluat e 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 cards Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluat e This is the mammoth bone hut I am working on in Gontsy (Ukraine). I am excavating mammoth bone huts since 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

Mammoths: Extinct! Explore cards Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluat e 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.

Mammoths: Extinct! Explore cards Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluat e Dr David Nogue´s-Bravo, Madrid, Spain 9a I 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?

Mammoths: Extinct! Explore cards Untrialled Beta activity from the Extinction unit of the WikiedScience curriculum © Science UPD8 at page may have been changed from the original Engage ElicitExploreExplainElaborateExtendEvaluat e Dr Barbara Silva: London, UK 8a The 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.