2. Yes or No - People harm the environment when they plant trees.
3. Yes or No - People harm the environment when they drain wetlands.
4. Yes or No - People harm the environment when they build skyscrapers.
Building cities definitely harms the ecosystem--destroys habitat, increases pollution, and disturbs water drainage by diverting rainfall to runoff instead of returning to the water table. Planting trees may harm the ecosystem as well, though! Norway maples are an invasive species, for example.
Yes, beavers cut down trees and change the environment, but they change it from one type of habitat with diverse lifeforms to another type of environment with many other lifeforms. When we build cities the resulting habitat really only suits humans, rats, cockroaches, feral cats and dogs, and sometimes coyotes. Plus there are about 6.5 billion of us!
However, we can recognize these valid concerns without turning into rabid PETA tree-huggers. Perhaps you could have a meeting with the teacher and see why he is presenting this material and what he is trying to teach the children.
I'm guessing you don't see your own internal irony.
Unless you don't consider, man, rats, cockroaches, etc. to be "diverse lifeforms."
SD
I agree all animals change their environment to the extent they can to provide them with a benefit. I just happen to think humans do it the best. That may be a bad thing for other lifeforms and we should take note to be mindful of our actions.
I would just like to point out that not building a fence to stop illegals crossing our border based on a bird's habitat is an abuse of this principal.
I think a meeting with the teacher sits atop the short list of actions to take.
The 'yes or no' questions are fallacious since they aren't yes or no questions. This is poor training for third-graders, and, unfortunately, the training will stick for most all the way through adulthood.