1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Nell Bang-Jensen is a teacher and theater artist living in Philadelphia, PA. Her passion for arts education has led her to a variety of roles including developing curriculum for Philadelphia Young Playwrights and teaching at numerous theaters and schools around the city. She works with playwrights from ages four to ninety on developing new work and is especially interested in alternative literacies and theater for social change. A graduate of Swarthmore College, she currently works in the Artistic Department of the Wilma Theater and, in addition to teaching, is a freelance actor and dramaturg. In 2011, Nell was named a Thomas J. Watson Fellow and spent her fellowship year traveling to seven countries studying how people get their names.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Reading: Informational Text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.3 Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.5 Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.6 Identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe.

2. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?
© Frans Lanting/Getty Images
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?
Scarlet macaws and blue-and-yellow macaws have the “least concern” conservation status. But they still make great ambassadors for preservation efforts. Their natural habitat extends through the Amazon basin of South America, up into Central America, and southern Mexico. Human development has encroached on these wild locales, and as a result, some populations have disappeared from regions where they were once plentiful.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?1
Web Search
What is a conservation status? What does it mean for a species to be extinct? 2
What are the 9 different conservation statuses according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species? 3
What are the factors scientists take into account when creating the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species? 4
What information would you need to know about macaws before giving them a conservation status? 5
Some consumer guides group seafood into other categories depending on their conservation status. What are these categories? Why do you think this is important information to give a consumer?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?1
Web Search
What is a conservation status? What does it mean for a species to be extinct? 2
What are the 9 different conservation statuses according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species? 3
What are the factors scientists take into account when creating the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species? 4
What information would you need to know about macaws before giving them a conservation status? 5
Some consumer guides group seafood into other categories depending on their conservation status. What are these categories? Why do you think this is important information to give a consumer?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?1
Web Search
What is a conservation status? What does it mean for a species to be extinct?
(Possible queries: “what is a conservation status”, “for kids, understanding conservation status”, “what does it mean for a species to be extinct?”).
From and
The conservation status of a group of organisms (for instance, a species) indicates whether the group still exists and how likely the group is to become extinct in the near future. In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point.

8. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?2
Web Search
What are the 9 different conservation statuses according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species?
(Possible queries: “IUCN Red List of Threatened Species”, “9 different conservation statuses”).
From
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. Categories are:
Extinct (EX) – No known individuals remaining.
Extinct in the wild (EW) – Known only to survive in captivity, or as a naturalized population outside its historic range.
Critically endangered (CR) – Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.
Endangered (EN) – High risk of extinction in the wild.
Vulnerable (VU) – High risk of endangerment in the wild.
Near threatened (NT) – Likely to become endangered in the near future.
Least concern (LC) – Lowest risk. Does not qualify for a higher risk category. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category.
Data deficient (DD) – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction.
Not evaluated (NE) – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria.

9. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?3
Web Search
What are the factors scientists take into account when creating the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species?
(Possible queries: “how do scientists decide the conservation status of a species?”, “how do scientists make the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species?”).
From
Many factors are taken into account when assessing conservation status: not simply the number of individuals remaining, but the overall increase or decrease in the population over time, breeding success rates, and known threats.

10. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?4
Web Search
What information would you need to know about macaws before giving them a conservation status?
(Possible queries: “how do scientists decide on a conservation status?”, “determining what a conservation status is”).
From
The conservation status of a species is an indicator of the likelihood of that species continuing to survive either in the present day or the future.
Many factors are taken into account when assessing the conservation status of a species: not simply the number remaining, but the overall increase or decrease in the population over time, breeding success rates, known threats, and so on.
Based on this description about what factors are taken into account to determine a species’ conservation status, students should then apply it to the macaw specifically. They should articulate that they would need more information than just how many macaws are left in the world. They would need to learn more about the history of macaws in the world (for example, is their population size increasing or decreasing?) They would also want to think about what threats there are to macaws around the world and their breeding rate (for example, if scientists are trying to increase their populations by making male and female macaws create offspring, are they succeeding at this?).

11. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?5
Web Search
Some consumer guides group seafood into other categories depending on their conservation status. What are these categories? Why do you think this is important information to give a consumer?
(Possible queries: “seafood conservation status”, “what is the conservation status of seafood?”).
From
Answers will vary. For example, from “Seafood Watch”:
The Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program helps consumers and businesses choose seafood that's fished or farmed in ways that protect sea life and habitats, now and for future generations. Our recommendations indicate which seafood items are "Best Choices" or "Good Alternatives," and which ones you should "Avoid.” We raise public awareness about sustainable seafood issues through our consumer guides, website, mobile apps and outreach efforts. Since 1999, we've distributed over 45 million consumer guides and our smartphone app has been downloaded over a million times. We also encourage restaurants, distributors and seafood purveyors to purchase from sustainable sources. We have over 200 partners across North America, including two of the largest food service companies in the U.S.
Students can browse the Seafood Watch website, or websites like it, to think about how sometimes a species may be threatened or endangered because of human action. Categories like the ones developed by Seafood Watch can help us be aware of the choices we’re making as consumers. For example, we may want check what the category is on a particular fish so that we can make the choice to eat seafood that has fewer threats to its population than others.

12. How do scientists determine the conservation status of a group of animals like the macaws?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question. Students should understand that the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species categorizes species’ conservation status into 9 categories. Most of all, students should be able to articulate that a species’ conservation status depends on more than just how many of one type of animal there are in the world. When determining conservation statuses, scientists also consider a species’ breeding success rate, where they live in the world and what threats to their populations might be, whether these threats are increasing or decreasing, and how their population has changed over time.