A Walk in the Woods, Environmental Education Company

SL2 Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally. Our programs focus on a multi-sensory and multi-step approach to learning. All programs have a slide presentation, hands-on artifacts, interactive educational displays and live animal demonstrations. There are live hands-on animals in every program. SL5 Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations. Programs include colorful images to explain science concepts via slides, posters, charts and diagrams. Also on display are a large variety of hands-on common and uncommon artifacts (some rare and endangered) for students to compare texture, color, shape and form. SL6 Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. During the presentation, students are provided with new vocabulary pertaining to the science topic. SL3 Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric. Periodically throughout the presentation, students are encouraged to ask questions.

K.L.1 Compare characteristics of animals that make them alike and different from other animals and nonliving things. K.L.1.1 Compare different types of the same animal (i.e. different types of dogs, different types of cats, etc.) to determine individual differences within a particular type of animal. Students learn how terrestrial turtles are different from aquatic turtles including freshwater and saltwater turtles. Hands-on carapaces of aquatic and terrestrial turtles are exhibited. For size comparison, 3 preserved common snapping turtles are exhibited alongside a newborn Loggerhead sea turtle in formaldehyde. Live terrestrial and aquatic turtles are demonstrated. 2.L.1 Understand animal life cycles. 2.L.1.1 Summarize the life cycle of animals: • Birth • Developing into an adult • Reproducing • Aging and death Students learn about the life cycle of sea turtles from birth to adulthood. The slide presentation covers the whole nesting process from emergence, nesting site preference, egg deposition and return to the sea. Observation of crawl diagram. On display are preserved specimens of Green sea turtle eggs, Loggerhead and Green sea turtle hatchlings, carapaces from 2 year old Green and Hawksbill sea turtles and an adult carapace of a Green sea turtle. Students witness an adult life-size image of the largest turtle in the world, the Leatherback sea turtle and compare it to their newborn size. 4.L.1 Understand the effects of environmental changes, adaptations and behaviors that enable animals (including humans) to survive in changing habitats. 4.L.1.1 Give examples of changes in an organism’s environment that are beneficial to it and some that are harmful. Sea turtles are affected by man-induced problems such as poaching, lights on developed beaches, coral reef degradation and incidental capture in nets and fishing lines/hooks. Today, many conservation efforts are in place to reduce light on developed beaches thus increasing nesting and hatchling success rates, protection of sea turtle nesting beaches, establishment of sea turtle hatcheries, conducting tagging and release operations and further scientific research on these endangered animals.