Students investigate the essential question, “What are mountain lions?” through observation, movement, drawing, shared research, measurement, discussion, and model-making. They gather evidence about mountain lions’ needs, adaptations, social behavior, habitat relationships, and interactions with Southern California communities. In collaborative teams, students ask questions, revise their ideas using feedback, and design a simple object or tool that could help people and wildlife share local spaces safely. Their evolving theories and solutions become a public exhibition that communicates how their understanding changed.
Learning goals
Students will investigate “What are mountain lions?” by asking questions, observing evidence, and using local scientific sources to describe their features, behaviors, needs, and adaptations. They will build and revise drawings and models showing how mountain lions, other living things, and Southern California habitats depend on and affect one another. Through shared research, discussion, drawing, and group writing, students will compare ideas, make decisions, use feedback, and communicate evidence-based explanations. Students will identify a human-wildlife coexistence problem and collaboratively design, test, and improve a simple model, object, or tool that could help address it.
[Next Generation Science Standards] LS.2.D - Social Interactions and Group Behavior
[Next Generation Science Standards] LS.2.A - Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems
[Common Core] CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.K.7 - Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).
[Next Generation Science Standards] K-2-ETS1-1 - Ask questions, make observations, and gather information about a situation people want to change to define a simple problem that can be solved through the development of a new or improved object or tool.
Competencies
Critical Thinking & Problem Solving - Students consider a variety of innovative approaches to address and understand complex questions that are authentic and important to their communities.
Collaboration - Students co-design projects with peers, exercise shared-decision making, strengthen relational agency, resolve conflict, and assume leadership roles.
Self Directed Learning - Students use teacher and peer feedback and self-reflection to monitor and direct their own learning while building self knowledge both in and out of the classroom.
Effective Communication - Students practice listening to understand, communicating with empathy, and share their learning through exhibiting, presenting and reflecting on their work.
Content Expertise - Students develop key competencies, skills, and dispositions with ample opportunities to apply knowledge and engage in work that matters to them.
Products
Students will create evolving “What are mountain lions?” drawings, question maps, observation notes, and shared research writing using books, photographs, tracks, and local scientific information. Small groups will build and revise habitat models showing mountain lions’ needs, adaptations, relationships with other living things, and interactions with human communities. Teams will design and test a simple model tool or structure that could help people and mountain lions safely share local spaces. For a public exhibition, the class will combine its strongest work into an interactive Southern California habitat display and collaborative book, with students presenting evidence and explaining how their ideas changed.
Launch
Transform the classroom into a “mountain lion mystery” with replica paw prints, motion-camera images from the Santa Monica Mountains, and recorded animal sounds. In small groups, children observe, measure, move like the animal, draw what they notice, and discuss what each clue might reveal. Gather their ideas around the essential question, “What are mountain lions?” and create a class board of current theories and questions. Revisit the board throughout the project so children can add evidence and revise their thinking.
Exhibition
Create a “Living Near Mountain Lions” museum for families, schoolmates, and a local wildlife expert, organized around the question, “What are mountain lions?” Small groups display revised habitat models, life-size measurement comparisons, observational drawings, and shared writing about mountain lions’ needs, behaviors, and relationships with people and other living things. Children guide visitors through the exhibit, explain how evidence changed their ideas, and demonstrate a collaboratively designed object or tool that could help people and wildlife safely share local spaces. Include an audio or photo documentation wall featuring children’s questions, discussions, feedback, and reflections from across the project.
