Thank you so very much for booking an environmental education program with the Center for Wildlife. We are so pleased to be able to bring our programming to you, your students, and community. We pride ourselves at the Center for Wildlife with bringing high quality education programming about wildlife ecology, human impacts on wildlife and critical ecosystems, and stewardship to a region facing intense pressure from development and population growth. Our programming is aimed at educating and connecting our audiences to their local wildlife and environment, helping them to invest in and steward the environment that we share with our wild neighbors and each other leading to a healthier and happier world.

Research has consistently demonstrated that pre-teaching activities lead to increased academic outcomes. Pre-teaching lessons can give struggling students a head start, as well as a crucial opportunity to experience success in the classroom. It also allows exposure to the vocabulary and enables the students to start thinking about what they will be learning about. Prior knowledge can be stimulated and issues that may need to be clarified present themselves. We believe that pre-teaching is a powerful tool that benefits all involved.

Please enjoy this video with your class prior to our visit to help get everyone become familiar with the work that the Center for Wildlife does as well as to stimulate past learning and get their brains excited about and connected to our upcoming presentation.

Pre-Teaching Vocabulary

Nocturnal - animals awake at night

Conservation Medicine - Conservation medicine within Center for Wildlife is defined as: Combining veterinary medicine and natural history to return local wildlife to their ecosystems, utilizing patient information to support conservation efforts, and contributing data to the study of health relationships at the wildlife, human, environmental junction.

Diurnal - animals awake during the day

Crepuscular - animals awake at dawn and dusk

Raptor - a bird of prey, e.g., an eagle, hawk, falcon, or owl

Reptile - cold-blooded animals which lay eggs and have skins covered with small, hard plates called scales

Mammal - warm blooded animals with hair, female mammals give birth to babies rather than laying eggs, and feed their young with milk.

Ectothermic - having a body temperature that varies with the temperature of the surroundings

Endothermic - warm-blooded animals; that is, those that maintain a constant body temperature independent of the environment.

Habitat - the natural environment in which it normally lives or grows.

Habitat fragmentation - the breaking up of a habitat by roads, houses and development

Snag - a dead tree

Orphan - a young animal whose parents have died or are gone

Feather - the soft covering on its body. Each feather consists of a lot of smooth hairs on each side of a thin stiff center.