Elephant worksheets and lesson plans for teachers

Grades K to 2

Parents and babies. Read the calf section of our behavior page aloud (or retell it): a newborn weighs roughly 50 to 120 kg, drinks its mother's milk, and other females in the family help look after it. Ask students to name one thing the mother or family does and one thing the calf does. Students then draw a calf with its family.

NGSS 1-LS1-2 (grade 1): read texts and use media to determine patterns in behavior of parents and offspring that help offspring survive.

Grades 3 to 5: an elephant worksheet for 3rd grade and up

Why live in a herd? Using the family groups section, students list three things a herd gives its members (finding food and water, protection, care of calves) and write one sentence arguing that being in the group helps an elephant survive. This is the natural elephant worksheet for 3rd grade classes working on animal groups.

NGSS 3-LS2-1 (grade 3): construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive.

Who can live here? Compare the three habitats on the species fact sheet. Students pick one habitat (open savanna, dense rainforest, or Asian forest and grassland) and give evidence for which elephant survives well there and which would survive less well, using ears, size and diet as clues.

NGSS 3-LS4-3 (grade 3): construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.

Structure and function. The adaptations worksheet asks students to connect external structures (ears, trunk, tusks, feet, skin) to what they do.

NGSS 4-LS1-1 (grade 4): construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. Assessment of this expectation is limited to macroscopic structures.

Grades 6 to 8

The same pattern in two forests. Students read about forest elephants spreading fruit seeds in central Africa and about bees and elephants in Kenya, then explain the pattern: in both places, elephants and another species affect each other's survival. One interaction is mutually beneficial (elephant and fruit tree), and one is an animal avoiding a danger. They predict what would change in each forest if elephants disappeared.

Sources to hand out: the forest elephant page and the human-elephant conflict section of the conservation page.

NGSS MS-LS2-2 (middle school): construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems, including competitive, predatory and mutually beneficial relationships.

Grades 9 to 12

Does the herd help the individual? Students read the research page entries for McComb and colleagues (2001 and 2011) and evaluate the evidence: older matriarchs were better at judging unfamiliar elephants and at responding to lion roars. They write whether that supports the claim that group behavior improves survival, and what the studies do not prove.

NGSS HS-LS2-8 (high school): evaluate evidence for the role of group behavior on individual and species' chances to survive and reproduce.

When the environment changes fast. Using Campbell-Staton and colleagues (2021) on tusklessness in Gorongosa and the population papers on the research page, students evaluate the claim that rapid human driven change can shift which traits are common and can push a species toward extinction. They must separate what the data show from what they infer.

NGSS HS-LS4-5 (high school): evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in increases in some species, the emergence of new species over time, and the extinction of others.