Topic: Landscape scultpors

Target group

4th‑grade students of elementary school

Core curriculum

Grade IV

VI. The natural environment of the immediate area. Pupil:

1) recognizes the components of animate and inanimate nature in the immediate vicinity of the school;

6) lists and describes factors conditioning life on land and adapting organisms to life.

General aim of education

Students exchange factors affecting the landscape.

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Criteria for success
The student will learn:

• exchange and describe factors affecting the landscape;

• indicate examples of erosion occurring in the immediate environment.

Methods/techniques

• activating

  • discussion.

• expository

  • talk.

• exposing

  • film.

• 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;

• notebook and crayons/felt‑tip pens;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers.

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

Realization

• The teacher announces a movie. He instructs his pupils to write a research question and a hypothesis in the form provided in the abstract. Then he plays the video and the students note their observations and conclusions. The teacher points the person who shares his insights and explains the reasonableness of the conclusions noted.

• The teacher asks pupils to look up the concept of erosion in an abstract and write a definition of the term in the notebooks.

• Students independently perform interactive exercise No. 1.

• The teacher recommends students to read the fragment „How wind and water affect the landscape?” And viewed the pictures in „Gallery 3” and then presented the impact of selected plants and animals on the landscape.

• Students independently perform interactive exercises No. 2 and No. 3.

Summary

• Students perform Exercise No. 4.

• The teacher asks students to finish the sentence: „In today's lesson, I learned ...”.

Homework

• Students perform „Task 2.1”.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Landscape scultpors

We already know that weather has a substantial impact on the environment. It’s worth to think about whether the surrounding landscape always was and will be the same as it is now. And if it’s changing, what are the reasons for these changes. The landscape is changed, for instance, by inanimate factors that share the surface of the Earth: the Sun, water and wind. Their destructive effect on the Earth’s surface is called erosion.

As far as Poland is concerned, the form of erosion that’s of greatest importance is erosion caused by river flows, sea water and rainfall. Rivers deepen and widen their valleys. Rock fragments are carried to their more remote parts. Waves have a significant impact on the coasts. They gradually erode land and often carry fragmented rocks over large distances. Rainwater contributes to the erosion of ploughed fields, canyons and steep embankments. One the effects of erosion is the formation of unusually shaped rocks. Sometimes water‑soaked soil sinks causing landslides. In addition, changes in temperature caused by the Sun and frost can lead to water getting into the rock crevices and freezing, causing rocks to fragment as a result.

Since water and wind erode rocks and carry their particles, what happens with them next? Their particulates are deposited in other locations. This process is called accumulation. This process also affects the landscape. We will prove it by performing an observation.

Plants and animals also affect the landscape. For instance, a forest landscape is dominated by trees and other plants that live in a symbiotic or dependent relationship with the trees. A meadow, on the other hand, is dominated by grass and other herbaceous plants that co‑create the landscape. The plant life limits the effects of wind on the landscape and vice versa. For instance on deserts, where there are no plants, wind plays an extremely important role in shaping the landscape, whereas in forests it has barely any effect.
The impact of animals on the landscape can be seen more rarely. However, they can built structures that significantly affect the appearance of the surrounding environment. By building dams on small rivers, beavers create expansive marshes. Ants build anthills that can be higher than 1 metre above ground level (and which extend much deeper into the ground). Termites, which live in a warmer climate, build colonies that can reach even up several metres in height. Stork nests are an example of the impact that birds have on the landscape, but there are birds that build much bigger nests. Large herds of animals can trod paths and destroy plant life by eating or trampling it.

• One of the elements that affect the landscape is erosion, i.e. the destruction of earth surface by inanimate factors.

• Plants and animals form part of the landscape, but they can also change it.