2. Incorporate Poetry: Have students create and illustrate poems about the Ivory-billed woodpecker or another threatened, endangered, or extinct species. Post the poems in the classroom.
3. Write Your Representative: In the book, ornithologists tried to negotiate with loggers to stop logging the last known areas in North America where Ivory-billed woodpeckers were reported. Have students write a letter to their representative (local, state, or national) urging them to take action on a current environmental issue. The Internet and environmental organizations can help students learn about today's environmental issues.
4. Invite a Guest Speaker: Invite a professional to speak to the class on the issue of extinction and endagered species. The speaker could be:
- A college professor discussing his or her personal experiences with researching an endangered species (i.e. herpetology professor who finds new frog species in Central America and watches them go extinct before they are named and his/her experiences with the local government.)
- A natural history museum curator discussing an extinct speciman the museum has and a history of how the speciman was acquired (i.e. through donation, collected by museum years ago, etc.)
- A zookeeper discussing the habitat and behavior of some of the endangered species the zoo has.
