NEW AQA GCSE Triology (2016) Biology - Extinction

This lesson is designed for the NEW AQA Trilogy Biology GCSE, particularly the ‘Inheritance, variation and evolution’ SoW.

For more lessons designed to meet specification points for the NEW AQA Trilogy specifications for Biology, Chemistry and Physics please see my shop: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/SWiftScience

This lesson begins with a video and a set of questions which pupils will need to answer about extinction and try and come up with a definition for this term. Once completed pupils can check their work against the answers provided on the PowerPoint.

The next activity is for pupils to think > pair > share ideas about the sorts of changes that might occur within an organisms environment to bring about extinction. Pupils can discuss with their partner and create a mind map of their ideas in their books. Once pupils have completed this you can reveal some of the reasons for environmental change on the PowerPoint slide and pupils can check what they have got against the answers, adding in any they didn’t manage to get.

The next activity is for pupils to read some cards of information about the causes of extinction, pupils can work in pairs or groups to read through these causes and summarise each one in their books.

To put thees causes into context, the next activity is for pupils to look at examples of organisms which are at the brink of extinction and the reasons why. Pupils will be given a set of cards with information about a range of animal and plant organisms which are at different stages on the IUCN red list. Pupils will need to complete a table of information to describe the habitat and reasons why four of these organisms are endangered.

The last part of the lesson will focus on mass extinctions, pupils will watch a video and answer questions about the causes and repercussion of mass extinction events. Once completed pupils can mark their work against the assessment criteria.

The plenary activity is for pupils to pretend they are a conservationist campaigning to protect an organism of their choice, they need to write a twitter message to their followers to raise awareness of the factors which may be critically affecting the organism.

All resources are included at the end of the presentation. Thanks for looking, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section and any feedback would be appreciated :)