Topic: Where can we find glaciers and ice sheets?

Target group

1st‑grade student of high school and technical school (basic programme)

Core curriculum

IV. Hydrosphere: water resources on the Earth, seas, sea currents, river network, glaciers.

Student:

5) explains the process of formation of glaciers and presents their occurrence on Earth.

General aim of education

The student will get acquainted with the geographical location of mountain glaciers and modern ice‑sheets.

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Criteria for success
The student will learn:

• explain where on the Earth there are big ice‑sheets;

• on the map of a chosen continent, indicate the place of occurrence of mountain glaciers;

• to instance examples of post‑glacial landscape elements.

Methods/techniques

• expository

  • talk.

• activating

  • didactic game.

• exposing

  • exposition.

• programmed

  • with computer;

  • with e‑textbook.

• practical

  • exercices concerned.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• activity in groups;

• collective activity.

Teaching aids

• e‑textbook;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers;

• multimedia resources contained in the lesson „Where are glaciers and ice‑sheets occur today?.

Lesson plan overview

Before classes

• Before classes, the instructor recommends students to read at home with all the material from the lesson „Where are the glaciers and ice‑sheets created today?” In the e‑textbook.

Introduction

• The teacher explains the aim of the lesson and together with students determines the success criteria to be achieved.

• The teacher gives the topic, the goals of the lesson in a language understandable for the student, and the criteria of success.

Realization

• The teacher asks selected students to recall from the previous lesson („In what conditions are glaciers and ice sheets created?”) The following issues:
  - the boundary of eternal snow and its course for various latitudes;
  - formation of glaciers and ice sheets;
  - examples of traces of glaciers in Polish mountains.

• The host conducts a knowledge quiz on new concepts that appear in the lesson. The quiz can be carried out using the traditional method or with the use of ICT tools, eg using the Kahoot! (more information at https://kahoot.com/).

• The teacher informs who achieved the highest scores in the quiz. Then he explains the concepts that most students have had problems with. The leader can also ask the winners for an explanation of the terms.

• The teacher presents a photo gallery in an abstract, showing selected post‑glacial terrain forms, and then he explains their formation.

• The teacher divides the class into groups and each of them assigns one continent. Students search for glaciers on the maps of individual continents. Due to the lack of mountain glaciers in the area of mainland Australia, the teacher may skip this continent or recommend searching for mountain glaciers on the islands included in Oceania.

• Each group discusses the assigned continent, indicating the locations of glaciers. If necessary, the teacher complements students' statements.

• Working individually, students solve interactive exercises from the abstract.

Summary

• The teacher briefly presents the most important issues discussed in class. He answers the additional questions of the proteges and explains all their doubts. Students complete notes.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Where can we find glaciers and ice sheets?

Currently there are two ice sheets on Earth. They cover almost the entire Antarctica and a major part of Greenland – the largest island on the planet. Mountain glaciers occur above the permanent snow line in mountain ranges on all continents except Australia (although they can be found on the neighbouring islands of New Zealand and even on New Guinea, just south of the equator).

The activity of glaciers and ice sheets, which used to cover much vaster areas in the past, led to the creation of a variety of landforms. A moving glacier erodes its own bed. This process is known as glacial abrasion glacial abrasion. When the glacier’s ice tongue enters a V‑shaped mountain valley formed by river erosion processes, the moving glacier widens the valley floor. As a result, the valley bed gets rounder and its walls become almost vertical, making it resemble the letter „U”. Another glacial landform is known as cirque. Cirques can be found in places previously filled with fir fields. A cirque is a bowl‑shaped basin surrounded on three sides by cliffs and closed by a threshold (lip) on the fourth side – the one at which ice from the firn field flowed into the ice tongue. Rock material dragged by the glacier abrades, flattens and erodes the valley floor. All the debris transported by the entire glacial mass of the glacier accumulates at the front and on both sides of the glacier as huge deposits of unsorted boulders, chunks of rock, sand and loam, known as till or boulder clay. Hills formed as a result of such glacial accumulation are called moraines. There are many different types of moraines. Spaces between moraines are often filled by glacial lakes.

Glacial sediments are deposited at the terminus of a melting glacier, forming very broad alluvial fans. Vast areas of many such fans are known as outwash plains or sandurs.

There are dozens more glacial landforms that can be distinguished depending on conditions in which they were formed, shape and material . They will be discussed more in detail in the lesson about the effects of glaciation on the landscape of Poland.

• Glaciers abrade the underlying bedrock, transport and cause accumulation of rock material.

• After an ice sheet or a glacier recedes, it leaves behind very diverse landforms created as a result of abrasion and accumulation of debris caused by the glacier, such as cirques, U‑shaped valleys, moraine hills, outwash fans and sandurs, glacial lakes.