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Teachers’ notes | Under pressure

Learning objectives:

  • To develop an awareness of Antarctica’s resources and how they are used
  • To foster research and presentation skills
  • To improve ways of summarising and communicating ideas and concepts
  • To work as a team under time pressure
  • To develop an understanding of interdependence in the context of pollution

A treasure trove of resources

This activity introduces the idea of Antarctica’s wealth of resources. The first page of the multimedia version could be displayed on the Interactive Whiteboard in conjunction with the different images available on the download version. Initially, students could be asked to identify the five resources shown in the images. Students could then complete the follow-up activity to rank the value of the resources independently, either online or using the download version.

Farming Antarctica’s waters

This is a structured enquiry-based activity focusing on one of Antarctica’s marine resources, fish or bio-prospecting. For a shorter activity the downloads provide a summary of the issues for each resource, but there is plenty of opportunity to extend the task by using the websites listed.

The Mercy Seat

This activity in the Meltdown section uses the ‘hot seating’ technique to review the learning outcomes of the Farming Antarctica’s waters activity. Alternatively, this could be a lesson in itself. Allow plenty of time for students to prepare themselves. Another option is that students could sit in the ‘mercy seat’ in groups to present and answer questions from the floor.

Putting you under pressure

This is an adaptation of the Marketplace activity featured in Paul Ginnis: The Teacher’s Toolkit (Crown House Publishing 2002). The activity is divided into a series of strictly timed episodes – the activity timer will be very useful for this purpose!

Although the instructions could be displayed on the Interactive Whiteboard it is a good idea to download and print out the information for Land, Water, Atmosphere beforehand. It would also be worth assigning groups to ensure that a reasonably equal number of groups are focusing on the three different areas. In addition, each group needs a large piece of paper and marker pens.

As a plenary, you could ask students to clear away all materials from their desks and ask questions to test their knowledge of pollution of Antarctica’s land, water and atmosphere.

Under Pressure

This activity in the Meltdown section could be an appropriate follow-up to putting you under pressure to allow you to gauge the extent of learning achieved on a more individual basis.

The download, Metals, minerals and meteorites provides an overview of the issues concerning Antarctica’s resources.