Topic: Asia – the ancient civilizations. The people of Asia.

Target group

VIII class of elementary school

Core curriculum

XIV. Selected problems and geographical regions of Asia: Asia as a continent of geographical contrasts; pacific „ring of fire”; monsoon climate in Southeast Asia; Japan - economy on the background of natural and socio‑cultural conditions; China - population distribution, demographic problems and importance in the global economy; India is a country of great development opportunities and social and economic contrasts; Near East - culture of the region, oil, area of armed conflicts.

Student:

1. shows, on the basis of general geographical and thematic maps, that Asia is an area of great geographical contrasts;

General aim of education

The student will learn the reasons for the distribution of the population of Asia.

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Criteria for success
The student will learn:

• indicate the areas on which the oldest Asian civilizations were formed;

• state the reasons for the diversification of population density in Asia;

• discuss the contemporary population distribution in Asia.

Methods/techniques

• expository

  • talk.

• activating

  • discussion.

• 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;

• physical map of Asia;

• physical map of the World;

• geographical atlases;

• projector.

Lesson plan overview

Before classes

• Students get acquainted with the content of the abstract. They prepare to work on the lesson in such a way to be able to summarize the material read in their own words and solve the tasks themselves.

Introduction

• The teacher informs students about the goals of the lesson.

• Using the LearningApss application - launching the Hangman resource - creating a password: Fertile Crescent.

Realization

• The teacher indicates the areas included in the Fertilized Crescent on the map. Discussion about the causes of settlement in this area.

• The use of tabular tables from the e‑manual - Probable causes and effects of agricultural development - display on the interactive whiteboard. Analysis of the entire class team.

• On the interactive whiteboard the teacher displays a map from an e‑textbook - Asia areas of the beginning of agriculture (plant and animal domestication). Analysis of Asian areas for the domestication of more important nutritional and crop plants and animals.

• Analysis of the schema from the e‑textbook: Population of Asia in 1960‑2010 and forecast for 2010‑2030. Students give reasons for the demographic explosion. On the board they record the environmental, economic and social consequences as a result of the rapid growth of the Asian population.

• The teacher asks pupils to find maps in geographical atlases associated with the distribution of population on the Asian continent. They determined where the majority of the population resides and provided the reason for the disproportion in the distribution of population and density of population. An Asia‑population map is displayed on the interactive whiteboard.

• Students identify the largest population centers in the world: the East Asian region including East China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japanese Islands and the South Asian region including the Indian Peninsula, the Ganges and Brahmaputra estuary, the Indus Plain.

• On the interactive whiteboard displays the teacher map of Asia - human varieties. The whole class team interprets the distribution of individual races. Uses geographical atlases. He gives the Asian countries with a dominant race.

• On the interactive whiteboard displays from gallery e‑textbook 3 Asia - Human varieties. Students define characteristics in the external construction. The teacher adds the characteristic features of varieties that have adapted to the climatic conditions prevailing in the area.

• Discussing the main religions in Asia and providing its main features..

Summary

• At the summary of the lesson, students perform interactive exercises on the interactive whiteboard.

• The teacher assesses the students, taking into account the contribution and their possibilities.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Asia – the ancient civilizations. The people of Asia.

In South‑Western Asia, around 8.5 thousand years ago, the ancient hunter‑gatherers started their first agricultural revolution, effects of which are apparent also nowadays. Here, in the region called the Fertile Crescent, which covers the Lower Nile Valley, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the Tigris‑Euphrates River Basin, is where the plants' and animals' domestication processes started. The reasons for the agricultural development have never been fully explained. However, it would be fair to assume that the reasons for them were existential, environmental and cultural.

In the Fertile Crescent area around 70 types of plants were domesticated, which later expanded all over the world. The most important were grains, legumes and numerous kinds of fruit trees. Goats, sheep, cows and pigs were the first domesticated animals. The North China Plain was the second region where the independent plants' and animals' domestication processes took place. In that region, around 7.5 thousand years ago they domesticated millet, sorghum, soya, tea, sugar cane, peach and orange. They also grew silkworms and reared pigs and buffalos.
Soon after the agriculture started to develop in the Indus Valley, in the Indian Peninsula and in South‑Eastern Asia. The Turran Depression in Central Asia, in turn, is thought to be the region where horses and camels were domesticated.

Civilization is a level of material, technical and spiritual culture achieved by a given population in a certain moment of its history. One civilization differs from another in: language, history, religion, traditions, social institutions. Those are crucial elements that a community living in the same area has in common.

Asia is inhabited by 4 billion 393 million people, which constitutes almost 60% of all the people in the world (figures from 2015). This graph shows the increase in the number of people in Asia.

In Asia, the absolute population growth has been on the extremely high, steady level since the mid‑50s of the 20th century. In that period, many countries of the continent experienced improvement in health situation and vaccines were introduced. This big wave of population growth is called the population explosion.

People of white race make 43% of all the people, and they live mostly in the regions of Southern and South‑Western Asia and in the area of Southern Siberia. People of black race make around 1.5% of all the people of Asia, and they live in some small areas of the Indian Peninsula and on the islands of South‑Eastern Asia. Each of the main varieties can be subdivided into numerous groups with different physical features.

An important quality of the Asian people is a big national and linguistic mosaic. There are around 5 thousand languages used in the world out of which a thousand is used in Asia. The largest Asian language families include: the Sino‑Tibetan languages and the Indo‑European languages. The smaller ones are: the Malayo‑Polynesian languages, the Dravidian languages (in India), the Afro‑asiatic languages (variations of Arabic) and also Japanese and Korean language families.

The map below shows the population density in Asia.

75% of the Asian population live in those two regions. Other than this, people live mostly in South‑Eastern Asia, for example, on some islands of the Malay Archipelago (Java, Bali), in Philippines, Vietnam or Thailand – around 500 million people in total live there.

Religion is a socio‑cultural phenomenon. It includes beliefs, cult, rituals and sometimes also well‑developed institutions. Religions influence the everyday life of the believers. The biggest monotheistic religions that acknowledge the existence of only one god were born in Asia: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The religions that are popular mostly in Asia are: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto. In several countries on the continent there are considerable groups of people that declare atheism. Those are: China (around 40%), North Korea (around 95%), Mongolia (around 50%), Kazakhstan (around 30%).