Autumn Year 6 What Is Life Like in the Amazon? Week 1: Where Is The
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Autumn Year 6 What is life like in the Amazon? Week 1: Where is the Amazon? Learning objective To understand what the Amazon is and where it is located Key question Where is the Amazon? Success criteria ● I know the eight countries that the Amazon region spans. ● I understand that ‘The Amazon’ may refer to a river, a river basin or a rainforest region. ● I can locate the Amazon basin and Amazon River on a map of South America. Key vocabulary Continent, country, region Locational vocabulary: longitude, latitude, Tropic of Capricorn, North, South, East, West Names of continents and relevant South American countries and regions. River, river basin, source, mouth Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 1 What is life like in the Amazon? Activities In this session, children work in pairs or small groups to discover facts about the Amazon, which they then share with the group using as much geographical vocabulary as they can. 1 Ask the children what they know about the Amazon. Get the children to work in pairs or small groups to share their initial ideas. Direct the discussion by posing questions such as: • What is the Amazon? Where is the Amazon? 2 You may wish to use a feedback tool such as answergarden.ch or padlet.com, to share ideas and discuss any misconceptions. 3 Establish that ‘The Amazon’ may refer to a region, a river, a rainforest or a river basin. Provide pairs with an atlas and ask if the children can find the Amazon River and rainforest, revising how to use an atlas to find a specific location. Ask them which continent and countries it is in. 4 Using either a blank world map (see Resources) or a digital resource, revise the names and locations of continents and oceans. Encourage the children to use geographical language to describe the location of South America, making reference to its global location (in comparison with other continents, the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn), its size and its latitude. Ask the children in pairs to use an atlas to identify key features of South America, such as key cities, Tierra del Fuego and the Andes (the source of the Amazon River is in the Peruvian Andes). 5 Give pairs or small groups an atlas, a blank map of South America and modelling clay of various colours (excluding blue and green). Ask the children to use the coloured modelling clay to outline the borders of the countries in South America, using cocktail stick flags to add labels. You may wish to give less able children a copy of a simpler map rather than an atlas. Give the children blue and green modelling clay, and ask them to add an additional layer by marking the Amazon basin in green and the Amazon River in blue. Some children may wish to add some tributaries too. Show the children the ‘Introduction to the Amazon River’ video clip (see link in Resources), introducing the river and explain that they will be finding out more about the region in the coming weeks. Still working in groups or pairs, Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 2 What is life like in the Amazon? challenge the children to use as much geographical vocabulary as possible to describe the location of the Amazon. Give them some time to prepare their description. You may wish to model this yourself first. Support less able children by providing a word list. 6 Hold an informal contest: which group can speak for the longest without repetition? Which group uses the most geographical words? Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 3 What is life like in the Amazon? Core knowledge ● The Amazon is a vast region that spans across nine countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, an overseas territory of France. The Amazon River Basin is home to the largest rainforest in the world and covers almost 40% of South America. ● The Amazon River is the largest river by discharge of water in the world, greater than the next seven largest rivers combined. It is the second longest river in the world, after The Nile and has the largest drainage basin in the world, about 7,050,000 square kilometres and accounts for approximately one-fifth of the world's total river flow. Resources needed ● Resources: ‘Where is the Amazon?’ PPT ● Class set of atlases ● Resources: Outline world map without country borders ● Resources: Outline map of South America ● Modelling clay in a range of colours including blue and green ● Cocktail sticks ● ‘Introduction to the Amazon River’ video clip – link Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 4 What is life like in the Amazon? Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 5 Autumn Year 6 What is life like in the Amazon? Week 2: What would it be like to walk through the Amazon rainforest? Learning objective To understand the Amazon’s climate and how the native animals are adapted to it Key question What would it be like to walk through the Amazon rainforest? Success criteria ● I know that the Amazon has a wet and a dry season. ● I can describe how the climate in the Amazon is different to the climate in the UK. ● I understand that animals are adapted to their habitat, and can give at least one example of an animal from the Amazon rainforest. Key vocabulary Weather, climate, seasons Forest, rainforest Activities Children are introduced to the Amazon rainforest, and compare its climate and wildlife to their own. 1 Explain that during this lesson, the children are going to imagine what it might be like to walk through the Amazon rainforest. Ask the children if they have ever been on a walk through a forest in the UK. Ask them to describe the experience to their partner, using all of their senses. Ask the children to feed back their experiences, and record their responses in the form of a class list poem. Ask the children what the weather was like during their walk. Hopefully you will get some contrasting examples, but if not, draw out the idea that the weather will have been different on different days and during different seasons. Explain that ‘weather’ is the given conditions on a particular day, but ‘climate’ refers to average weather patterns in a given place. Ask the children what they think the climate is like in the Amazon rainforest. 2 Establish that the Amazon doesn’t have four seasons as in the UK (in the Amazon, the variation in temperature between day and night is bigger than the variation in temperature at different times of the year). However, there is a Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 1 What is life like in the Amazon? wet and a dry season. Show the children climate graph for Manaus and their local area (see links in Resources) and ask them to write a description of the climate in both localities, noting the key differences. 3 Identify the plants and animals that the children may have observed in a British forest. Would the children expect to see similar or different plants and animals in the Amazon rainforest? Why? Establish that plants and animals are adapted to their environment, giving a few simple examples to illustrate this point. 4 Ask the children what plants and animals they would expect to see in the Amazon rainforest and why. Using print or digital resources, ask the children to work in pairs to research an Amazonian animal of their choice, finding out how it is adapted to its habitat. Ask the children to produce a poster about their chosen animal. Allow the pairs to share their findings with the rest of the class and create a class display of their posters. 5 Ask the children to imagine walking through the Amazon rainforest. Ask them to describe the walk to their partner, referring to all of their senses. Record their responses in the form of a class list poem. Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 2 What is life like in the Amazon? Core knowledge ● Weather is the given conditions on a particular day, whilst climate refers to average weather patterns in a given place. ● The Amazon has a tropical climate, typical in areas close to the Equator (12 degrees North or South of the Equator). There are only two seasons: wet and dry. ● The region consists of a variety of ecosystems including rainforests, seasonal forests, deciduous forests, flooded forests and savannahs. However, the region is most renowned for its rainforest, which covers most of the Amazon Basin. 5,500,000 square kilometres of the basin are covered by the rainforest, 60% of which is in Brazil. The Amazon represents over half of the planet's remaining rainforests and has an estimated 390 billion individual trees divided into 16,000 species. ● The Amazon is home to an estimated 10% of all species found on earth. Scientists estimate that there are at least 40,000 plant species, 427 mammals, 1,300 birds, 378 reptiles, more than 400 amphibians and around 3,000 freshwater fish. ● The Amazon is also home to more than 30 million people and about 9% is still made up of indigenous people – 350 different ethnic groups, more than 60 of which still remain largely isolated. Resources needed ● Resources: ‘Where is the Amazon?’ PPT ● Internet enabled computers or tablets ● ‘Climate data for your local area’ – link ● ‘Climate data for Manaus’ – link Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 3 Where does all our stuff come from? Rising Stars Geography Year 6 © 2019 Rising Stars UK Ltd 4 Autumn Year 6 What is life like in the Amazon? Week 3: What is Manaus like? Learning objective To research the Amazonian city of Manaus Key question What is Manaus like? Success criteria ● I know the key human and physical features of Manaus.