Peer Review

Wildlife & Wildlands Toolkit

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Dec 19, 2021 by Teacher Education

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

The Wildlife & Wildlands Toolkit is a science-based web resource designed for middle school classrooms that provides an overview of climate change from a USA perspective. The site includes a video presentation, learning activities and links to additional educational resources to enhance a lesson. Further, there are a number of case studies and a glossary of climate change terms.

Type of Material:

Instructional Materials

Recommended Uses:

middle school classroom teachers
informal educators in parks, refuges, forest lands, nature centers, zoos, aquariums, science centers, etc.
formal learning environmens
informal learning settings
homework
classwork
groupwork
individual
lecture
self-paced

Technical Requirements:

The resource was accessed by Google Chrome and Safari. The files are downloadable pdf documents. The video can be accessed via YouTube.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

investigate how climate change is affecting the Nation’s wildlife and public lands
investigate how everyone can become climate stewards
investigate animals specific to different eco-systems

Target Student Population:

Most activities are geared toward 5-8th grade, but some activities are for younger students. These activities can be used in a formal classroom, in science centers, or in informal settings such as museums or nature centers.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

No prerequisite knowledge is needed for the site, but prerequisite knowledge is needed for the student activities and they are outlined on each handout.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The learning object presents valid concepts.
The learning object presents educationally significant concepts related to climate change.
The site provides access to pre-requisite vocabulary via the glossary of terms.
The content is devoid of complex jargon.
The video is 12-minutes long and in a listener-friendly presentation style.

Concerns:

Some of material needs to be updated, such as the Teacher's Guide which is dated 2009.
Although the site identifies the audience as middle school level students, there are materials marked "high school". For example, Climate Check is an activity for high school students to estimate their school's greenhouse gas emissions.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

Broad goals are readily available on the site.
Learning activities could potentially increase student learning of basic concepts related to climate change.
Learning activities could improve a teacher's ability to teach climate change and how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The learning activities are easy to integrate within the science curriculum, and allows for small group learning activities, whole-class instruction or individual homework tasks.
The site offers a variety of active learning tasks, including asking students to create a paper atom from construction paper and track greenhouse gas emissions using a spreadsheet.

Concerns:

Some of the resources are dated. As an example, the "What You Can Do at School - Fact Sheet" is dated 2007. There are no built-in assessments.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The web resource is easy to navigate.
All material is accessible via online viewing or downloadable files.
The material is engaging with good graphics and video.

Concerns:

One of the spreadsheets "Climate Check" was not presented in an accessible format, meaning it did not work with a screenreader.

Other Issues and Comments:: The web resource offers an aggregate list of top lessons and learning activities from partnering agencies, with a commitment to updating the site as additional information becomes available. This could be an advantage to formal and informal educators.
Creative Commons: