Tundra Connections: Back To Polar Bear Basics – Middle/High School

Polar bears are mighty animals but they need each other and a healthy environment to survive. Their fur, teeth, claws, and fat are all integral to their survival, but so are their mothers and their learned skills in swimming and hunting.

Featured Virtual Field Trip

Tundra Connections Virtual Field Trip
Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, Virtual Field Trip

Be sure to RSVP and #CelebratewithDE as we return to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada for the annual polar bear migration on Thursday, November 8 at 11:30 AM (CT). Since 2010, Discovery Education has teamed up with Polar Bears International to bring students a series of webcasts during the annual polar bear migration. Find out about these extraordinary animals and learn more about our favorite big white bear, its habits and more.

Instructional Idea: Polar Bear Survival Guide

Challenge your students to create a survival guide for young polar bears. There is a lot of information a young polar bear needs to know to survive, from the workings of their adaptations, to learning from their mothers, to information about prey. Adapt the strategy Half the Picture (Canadian Version) to encourage students to structure their survival guides as booklets in which their polar bear students would get new information via text and partial images and then have to complete the pictures. (Consider having students exchange guides to assess their own learning.) Share your students’ diagrams and discoveries using @DiscoveryEd and hashtag #CelebrateWithDE.

Featured Resources

Half the Picture
(Canadian Version)
Discovery Education Streaming
Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, Spotlight on Strategy

Half the Picture is a teaching strategy that requires students to use new information to complete an image. This active learning strategy ensures that students are building on prior knowledge and assimilating new knowledge.

Content Collection: Polar Bears (Canadian Version)
Discovery Education Streaming
Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, Content Collection

Venture into the Arctic – the land of polar bears.

Adaptation: The Key to Bears’ Survival
(Canadian Version)
Discovery Education Streaming
Grades 6-8, 9-12, Video Segment

Polar bears have unique physical adaptations that enable them to survive arctic conditions.

Polar Bear Cubs and Yearlings (Canadian Version)
Discovery Education Streaming
Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, Video Segment

Scientist Alysa McCall talks about polar bear cubs and the milk that they drink.

Subadult Polar Bears (Canadian Version)
Discovery Education Streaming
Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, Video Segment

Emphasizes the difficulties of the subadult stage in the life of a polar bear, and states that the survival rate of polar bears goes up once they reach adulthood.

Interested in joining classrooms around the world to Celebrate holidays year round? Check out our Timely Content Page for our Virtual Viewing Parties and more Instructional Strategies.

from Discovery Education https://ift.tt/2StI15p