Cold Environments: Adapting to Cold Environments

AQA GCSE Geography lesson for Unit 1B: In this second lesson of the Cold Environments section we look at how plants and animals have adapted to the extreme physical conditions in cold environments.

There is a retrieval practice starter based on the content delivered in lesson 1. We begin by creating a mindmap of the physical challenges of cold environments. There are some picture prompts for the students to think about, they then have the answers which they can use to annotate their mindmaps explaining how these factors pose a challenge in cold environments. We then look at the bearberry plant as an example of a plant that has adapted to these conditions. The students annotate the picture using some sentence starters and finishers. They need to match them up to help explain how the plants adaptations enable it to live in these places. We the write down the definitions of a physical and behavioural adaptation. Next we move onto the Arctic fox, the students again annotate an image of the fox, this time they are using two video clips and then highlight the adaptations into two categories (physical and human).

We finish with 6-mark GCSE-style question based on the content of the lesson and the students have some tips and guidance on how to answer it if required. They also have a writing frame.

Hope this saves you some valuable planning time.

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