Preview · the opening missionRead this to the class:
Isle Royale is a wild, forested island in Lake Superior, between Canada and the United States. No people hunt there. Moose eat the trees, and wolves eat the moose. Scientists have counted both almost every winter since 1959. In 1995 they counted about 2,400 moose. Two years later they found only about 500. Nobody shot them, and they did not swim away. Your team's job: use the real counts and the evidence to find out what happened to the moose.
Teams of three, with jobs that rotate at each station: Reader (reads the card aloud), Grapher (marks the graph), Recorder (writes the team's claim).
Look inside the PDF
Sample pages, stamped “preview”. The download is the clean, full lesson.
In the full lesson PDF
9 printable pages
- Predict (5–10 min)
- Hunt (25 min)
- Reveal (10–15 min)
- Act (10 min)
- Background for the teacher
- Assessment
- Student sheet
- Worksheet: Isle Royale data and evidence cards
- Worksheet: Label it
- Worksheet: Try it at home
On the student sheet
- My prediction
- Our graph
- Evidence stations
- Our claim
- Report to the ranger
- Isle Royale data and evidence cards
- Label it
- Try it at home
US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white. The student sheet is on its own page, ready to photocopy.
Free with an account (any 3 lessons), or US$19 for all 4 lessons in this unit.
What students show by the end
- Reads the data
- Links resources to population
- Judges the evidence
From the lesson’s rubric, which scores each one as not yet, getting there or got it.
Questions teachers ask
How long does “What happens to a population when food runs out?” take?
50–60 min. Group size: teams of 3.
How much prep does it need?
10 minutes: print the student sheet for everyone and one set of evidence cards. Tape the six cards on walls around the room as stations, spaced well apart.
What materials do I need?
None. No materials needed: just the printed sheets.
Which curriculum standards does it cover?
NGSS (US): MS-LS2-1 and MS-LS2-4 (partly). It also matches England National Curriculum, Key Stage 3 and Cambridge Lower Secondary Science, Stages 7 to 9 (not endorsed by Cambridge).
What’s in the lesson PDF?
A teacher guide that walks you through predict, hunt, reveal, act, background for the teacher and assessment, then a student sheet (“My prediction”, “Our graph”, “Evidence stations”, “Our claim”, “Report to the ranger”, “Isle Royale data and evidence cards”, “Label it” and “Try it at home”) on its own page, ready to photocopy. It’s US Letter and prints cleanly in black and white.
Can I try it for free?
Yes. A free account includes any 3 full lessons of your choice, and this can be one of them. After that, this unit is US$19 for all 4 lessons, yours to keep, or every lesson is US$199 a year.