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Teaching and Learning Proforma -
ANTARCTICA

Intended Outcomes:

Children will gain –

Understandings about

• The Antarctic continent
• Australia’s role in Antarctic exploration and development
• The issues concerning Antarctica’s future
• The needs of the Antarctic community

Skills concerned with

• Communicating ideas
• Communicating through the use of email
• Searching for more information through a variety of resources
• Decision making
• Co-operative group activities

Values through

• Identifying people’s viewpoints
• Clarifying personal beliefs
• Forming reasoned valued stances

Actions which encourage

• Making personal and group decisions
• Implementing decisions
• Responsibility
• Sharing of knowledge gained

Engaging students:

Locate Antarctica on world map and globe.

Divide the class into groups and find out what children know about Antarctica and sort these into fact and fiction –

• Who lives there?
• Are there indigenous peoples?
• Are there cities?
• What are the research stations? What happens there?
• Who "owns" Antarctica?
• Who or what sets the rules for this vast continent?
• Are there mountains? Volcanoes? Deserts? Rivers? Valleys?
• What animals, birds and fish are considered "native" to Antarctica?
• Are there any polar bears?

Compare Arctic and Antarctic regions.

Discuss ways the class can locate more information about Antarctica. List ideas.

Look at pictures and build a wordbank.

Refining (students’ questions, ideas and teacher’s intentions):

Rigby English: Endurance – Life in the Ice and Snow. Read the article – Introducing Antarctica.

Also read fact sheet on Antarctica. Children write down a summary of facts that best describes Antarctica to them at this stage.

Children write a true or false answer to 10 statements. (This will be re-administered at the end of the unit.)

Compare size of Antarctica to other continents.
Experiment – Poles apart (Endurance).

The Antarctic Territories. Study map. Which country has the largest territory?

Extending:

Various videos and CD-ROMs (borrowed from the Library and Information Centre, Hobart) will be shown and used throughout the unit.

Children will have an individual activity book comprising of a variety of activities taken from various resources (see below) covering the various learning areas. Other activities will include story writing, poetry writing, comprehension and cloze activities, reporting, board game, impact of tourism, murals, emailing a contact in Antarctica.

Activities will cover the following –

Children will work in groups of three to research the following topics –

• Flora – find out about the different types of plants that survive in this area.
• Transport – what modes of transport are needed to get to the Antarctica and what type of transport is used when people are working there.
• People in Antarctica – find out about the work of people in Antarctica. Also find out about the type of clothing that would be needed in these conditions. What essentials would they take with them
• Geography – What is the size of the country? Find out about pack ice. Describe the climatic conditions. Find out and name volcanoes, mountains, valleys.
• History – find out about some of the early explorers in Antarctica and what they achieved. (Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott, Douglas Mawson, Roald Amundsen). Mention the difficulties they encountered and their survival techniques. Map their journeys. Make a timeline.
• Stations – Research the history of the different Australian stations. Locate. Find out about the life on the stations. What type of buildings are there.
• Ozone – What is ozone? What has been the major cause of the increase in the size of the ozone hole? What can be done to help slow the speed at which the ozone hole is expanding?
• Recycling – Find out how the people of Antarctica go about recycling products and what they are doing to help preserve the Earth’s atmosphere.

Children will do individual research on various animal life in the Antarctica. They will also paint a watercolour of their animal:

Penguins, seals whales birds, krill, giant squid, fish, food chains, huskies, phytoplankton.

Multiple intelligence activities to include –

• Some people who live in cold climates have had jobs involving the killing of animals for their fur. This has outraged many people who think it is cruel. Take the point of view of the hunter and justify the importance of your job.
• What would it be like being a famous polar explorer? Would you be able to be like this? What special qualities do you think these people had?
• Plan then write a story about the following set of circumstances. Your aircraft crashes in a frozen world. It is three days before you are rescued. In your story, detail what you eat to survive and how you overcome the extreme weather conditions that prevail.
• Write a poem that involves and Antarctic animal
• Reply to one of the following job applications for Antarctica – a geologist, a chef, a plumber, or an over-snow transport driver. Clearly detail the qualities you have that enable you to do the job successfully and cope with the long months of isolation.
• Rewrite a fairy tale using Antarctic animals instead of the animals in the current story.
• You get lost whilst skiing and it looks likely that you will need to spend the night outdoors. Use diagrams to show the following – how to keep warm, the shelter, you build, what you eat and how you let rescuers know where you are.
• Using persuasive language, design a tourist brochure that aims to attract tourists to visit Antarctica on a three week boat cruise. Make sure you include all relevant information.
• Design a vehicle that can fly to the closest pole, land and travel in the water, exit the water and travel across the snow and ice. Of course all the necessary creature comforts must be present. Label the important design features of your vehicle.

Reflecting on what we have learnt

Teaching Resources:

Library and Information Centre, Hobart

CD-Rom - Antarctica, the last continent