Antarctica’s unique environment provides an opportunity to recycle familiar language in an unusual context. The abundant facts and figures of the text could stimulate number practice; weather conditions could include work on superlatives; daily routine (including sleeping patterns and diet) could reflect the differences between summer and winter or life at base camp and in the field. Higher level GCSE candidates could extend this into a piece of creative writing - perhaps a day in the life of a researcher or a paragraph explaining whether they would come here as tourists and why.

Ask students to research salient facts for an oral debate andor written work on the theme of global warming.