The carbon cycle - KS3 Activate lesson

A full 1 hour lesson designed for a mixed ability year 8 class.
This is the 6th lesson in “Chapter 4 - The Earth" from Activate 2, Chemistry. This lesson is on 'the carbon cycle’. This lesson has been separated from igneous rocks, which is found on the same textbook pages.
This lesson should be suitable to teach to any KS3 Chemistry class, even by those where Chemistry is not their specialism.
This lesson (and all lessons in this unit) is designed to be interactive and engaging, with plenty of real world examples and independent tasks.

From this lesson, students should be able to:

• State what the carbon cycle is
• Recall two processes that add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
• Recall two processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
• Label a diagram of the carbon cycle
• Describe how carbon is recycled in ecosystems

All of my lessons contain:

• A 5-in-5 retrieval-style starter
• An interesting lesson hook, careers link, or retrieval practice to start the lesson
• Teacher input slides with dual coding and reduced cognitive load, where key vocabulary is explicitly taught
• Teacher models
• Regular ‘check for understanding’ slides, such as hand signals quizzes and whiteboard quizzes
• Regular student independent practice slides, with optional scaffolds, challenges and answer slides
• A plenary task