Lesson video

Hi everyone, I'm Miss Harris, and welcome to today's Geography lesson.

I hope that you are all okay and you're really happy and smiley and ready to learn all about South America today.

Now we have flown to five continents already.

Today is South America.

And then during this week, we are also flying to Antarctica, which will take us to the end of our unit on the Southern continents.

The plane is behind me, as you can see, and I want you to help me fly to the Amazon Rainforest, which is the largest Rainforest in the whole world.

Okay, let's go to a hundred, so we're going to click, one, two, or we're going to clap one, two, you ready? Are you sure? Super sure? Okay, good.

Ready? Hands like this.

Or you can have your hands like this.

One, two.

Thank you so much for helping me get to the Amazon Rainforest.

Can you hear that? Sorry, I can just hear so many different sounds.

I can hear the rain, and hear some animals moving around.

I can hear the trees blowing.

Can you hear that too? Thank you for helping me get here.

We're going to get started now and learning all about South America.

Let's take a look.

We are now recapping the seven continents.

We're going to analyse a map of South America.

We're going to look at the climate and the physical features.

We're going to look more in depth about the Amazon Rainforest.

And then we are going to look at some landmarks, which you could find in South America.

You would need a piece of paper or an exercise book, a pencil, a coloured pen, so you can mark your work, and of course the most important part, your brain.

So we all know this really well by now.

We know that a geographer is a special type of scientist who studies the earth, the land and the sea, and the people side, not the sea.

They do study the sea though.

Here we've got South America on our 100% sheet and these are the parts that we are focusing on today and the facts.

Let's start Star Word.

Get your hands ready.

Stand the way you are.

You're going to copy me, ready? Star words, star words, star words! Your turn.

Rainforest.

Landmark.

So landmark is something you can see.

Landmark, your turn.

South America.

Your turn.

Continent, your turn.

Country.

Tropic, your turn.

Population, your turn.

Size, size, your turn.

Size, size.

Great job, sit back down in three, and two, and one.

Are you sat now? Super fast.

I'm going to say a continent, you're going to point to it.

Get your finger ready.

Asia.

Gosh, you're fast.

Europe.

North America.

South America.

Antarctica.

Amazing.

Great job.

Now, South America is in the Southern hemisphere.

You can see it's the orange one here on my map.

It's just below the equator, but part of South America is in the north, Northern Hemisphere.

So you can see the equator goes through the top, like Africa, where the equator, goes straight through it.

For your first question today, I would like you to take a look at these continents.

Now, each piece of land has a different shape.

Can you identify the continent by its shape? So you're going to write the letter.

So for example, you're going to write a and then you're going to write the name of the continent.

Ready? Off you go.

Okay, let's check our answers.

Get your coloured pen or pencil ready so you can tick them off or you can check your spelling.

Ready? The first one is Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, North America, and lastly, South America.

Can you pause the video and check your spelling and tick or fix? Well done, you are working so, so hard.

Already, great job here.

Now there are 12 countries in South America.

Having a look at this map of South America, can you spot the largest country? I'm going to give you a moment to have a look.

So the largest country is Brazil.

Can you say that word? Brazil, Brazil, Brazil.

Great job.

So Brazil is the largest country.

What's the largest country? Good.

Now the smallest is called Suriname.

What's it called? Good, you can see it right at the top of the map on that side.

It's a teeny, tiny country, but that doesn't mean that it's not a wonderful country just because it's small.

Now there are 422 million people that live in this continent.

That's a lot of people, isn't it? I would like you to write down three countries in South America.

Pause the video, have a go at that now.

Well done, there are lots you could have chosen from that.

Now, North America is in the Northern Hemisphere.

and South America is in parts of the Southern Hemisphere and a little bit in the Northern Hemisphere.

If we look at a map, you can see here, if you look on the other side, can you see the map? Where the red line is pointing to? That's called Panama.

That's called? In Panama there is a special canal that has been built, it's manmade, it's a 48 mile long canal which means that instead of the boat going all the way down round the tip of South America, they can go straight through North America and South America through the Panama Canal.

It around 1,400 ships, sorry, 14,000 ships, sorry, 14,000 ships sail through it every year.

And it has three pairs of locks for lifting and lowering the ships on different water levels.

It saves them a lot of time going through the Panama Canal.

Now, in South America, it can be divided into three physical regions.

So we have got the mountains and the highlands.

The mountain system is the world's longest mountain system called the Andes.

It has many peaks and some of them are volcano.

Then, we have got another region called the river basin.

Here you can see that Amazon River, this is taken from space, the Amazon River is the second longest river in the world behind the Nile River, which is in Africa.

It is the life force that holds all of the rainforest together, 'cause lots of animals in the rainforest depend on this ginormous river.

And you can see here, look how much it bends and curbs.

It's not a straight river, like you might think it is, it's got so many bends and turns and weaves.

And then the last region that South America is divided into is the coastal plains.

A coastal plain is an area of low, flat land, which is usually next to the sea coast.

The Atacama Desert is the driest region in the world.

And in South America, is usually quite warm for most of the year, and the climate is generally tropical, so it never gets too cold, but there are higher areas where it can get really cold, like in the mountains.

But here you can see it is the driest place in the world, even drier than some parts of the desert in Africa that we learned about.

Now, we are going to find out whether these statements are true or false.

So you can choose if you want to write them down or you can just point to the answer, which might be a bit easier.

So the first one says, the smallest country in South America is Brazil.

Now, if you would like to write it down, you can pause the video now and write that down and decide whether it's true or false.

So pause the video now if you're doing that.

So if you're not, I'd like you to point to the answer now.

South America, the smallest country in South America is Brazil, is that true or false? Point to the answer.

You ready? So if you've written it down, get ready to tick or fix.

It's false.

Brazil isn't the smallest country, it's the largest country.

Okay, ready for b? South America is usually quite warm throughout the year.

If you're writing it down, remember to pause the video.

Now, is that true or false? It's true, well done.

Give it a tick if you wrote it down.

Now ready for number, ready for c? Ships can sail through the Panama Canal instead of going around the continent.

Is that true or is that false? Pause the video if you're going to write it down.

If not, point to the answer.

It's true, you can go through the Panama Canal instead of going around the continent.

And the last one, d.

South America is larger than North America.

Is that true, or is that false? If you're going to write it down, pause the video now.

Not, or point to the answer, true or false? South America is larger than North America? Ready? False.

It isn't larger than North America.

North America is larger than South America, well done.

Okay, now we're going to move into learning about the Amazon Rainforest, which is the largest rainforest in the whole world.

And you can see that I'm here in the Amazon Rainforest.

It goes across many countries like Brazil and Peru and Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, it's so big that it crosses into some countries.

Now this tropical rainforest, if you laid the rainforest down, it would cover over half of the United States of America, is that big.

And often people refer to it as the lungs of the Earth.

What's that your lungs? Have they? So your lungs are inside your chest and they help you breathe.

Let's take a really deep breath.

Let's do another one.

Let's do two, are you ready? One more.

So that was a rainforest, produces 20% of the world's oxygen.

Oxygen is what we use to breathe.

So the deep breaths that we have just breathed in there, the oxygen could have come from the trees in the Amazon Rainforest, so we can say thank you to the trees.

Can you say, thank you, Amazon Rainforest! So it helps us stay alive.

But the trees in the Amazon Rainforest are so thick that it takes 10 minutes for the water to go through the leaves and hit the ground.

It's like a huge umbrella, it's just like a giant umbrella going across the top.

There are 3 million types of insects in the Amazon Rainforest as well.

Can you hear the rain in the Amazon Rainforests? Takes a long time for it to hit the ground.

Can you hear it? So you can see here, it goes on for miles and miles and miles.

Okay, so now I would like you to draw some pictures of the insects that you would find crawling around in the Amazon Rainforest.

We've got some really different insects here that you might not have seen before.

You can see at the top we've got a leaf! No, it's not a leaf, it's an insect.

It looks a bit like a grasshopper, but it's actually an insect and it disguises itself in the Amazon Rainforest so the other animals won't eat it.

Can you draw some pictures of some insects you could find.

Pause the video.

I can't wait to see the insects that you have drawn.

Now we're going to move on to looking at some landmarks that you could see in South America.

Can you remind me? I forgot, Miss Harris has forgotten.

What's a landmark? So a landmark makes a place recognisable.

That means that if you saw a picture of a landmark, you would know straight away where it is.

So if I showed you a picture of Big Ben, you would know straight away that that's in London because Big Ben is a landmark that we have in our city of London.

So let's have a look at some that we might see in South America.

We've got a huge glacier which is just off the coast of Argentina.

It is 18 miles long and 75 metres tall.

Now, I bet that you've got to play around at your school, that means if we were to take your playground and turn it that way, it's probably even taller than the length of your playground! It's so tall, 75 metres tall.

And scientists think that this glacier is around 18,000 years old.

So it has been frozen like this 18 years old.

And now a glacier is like a giant block of ice which is floating on the top of the water.

So that's in Argentina.

Then, we've got the Atacama Desert, which is in Chile.

It stretches from Peru all the way down to Chile.

It has less than one millimetre of rain a year.

That's like this.

Hardly any rain, that makes it the driest place on Earth, and not many animals live here because it's so dry.

But some animals like red scorpions, grey foxes, some desert also butterflies can survive here.

But the best part about this desert is if you stayed and camped overnight, you would see some of this best stars in the world, the clearest skies to go stargazing.

It's really beautiful, isn't it? Then we've got the Torres del Paine, which consists of lots of mountains, glaciers, lakes, and rivers.

It's a small mountain group at the heart of a National Park.

And you can see that here in Chile, it looks really, really beautiful, isn't it? Then, we've got Angel Falls.

What's it called? Angel Falls in Venezuela.

Can you say Venezuela? Venezuela.

That's a tricky word, say then Angel Falls.

It is the world's highest waterfall.

It looks really great, doesn't it? I'd love to visit there.

Then we have got, Miss Harris struggles to say this one, Machu Picchu, which is in Peru.

It's a city made of stone, built for a tropical built in a tropical mountain forest.

It was built by the Inca leaders around 600 years ago.

And you could see here, there are around 150 buildings, baths and temples.

There is often a low cloud around it because it's so high up on the mountain.

It's often known as the lost city.

And you can imagine why it's called that, because it's so high up on a mountain that people must've forgotten that it was there.

We have then got the Galapagos Island, the? These are islands are in Ecuador.

In the Galapagos you could find animals that you would never see anywhere else on Earth.

They only live there.

And they are not used to humans like us walking past so they won't run away from you, they're not scared of you.

They don't have fear of humans, so you could go and visit a giant tortoise for example, one of the animals that live there.

And giant tortoise can live for 100 years.

That's a really long time, really old tortoise, isn't it? So now what we're going to do is you have to match the fact to the landmark.

Now you can choose whether you would like to write the facts down and write down the place, or you use your finger to connect the fact to the landmark, okay? So the first one, the landmark is around 75 metres tall.

Next one, animals that live nowhere else on Earth, these are no fear and that live without running away from people.

Next one, it's a stone city around 600 years old.

This is the world's highest waterfall.

The national park has mountains, glaciers, lakes, and rivers.

And lastly, you could do some star gazing here, there are hardly any clouds.

Pause the video and either write them down or use your finger to connect them.

Off you go.

Okay, let's check our answers.

So we have got the first one, the landmark is around 75 metres tall.

So that is the Glacier, you're right.

The next one.

Animals live and they are not afraid of humans, this one is the Galapagos Island, well done.

The next one, is a stone city around 600 years old, it was Machu Picchu, well done.

We've got the world's highest waterfall that is Angel Falls, well done.

This national park has mountains, glaciers, lakes, and rivers.

This is the Torres Del Paine, great.

And then lastly, we have got that Atacama Desert, which is where you could do some stargazing.

Now, in the Galapagos that was a really, really important discovery that has helped shape lots of our sciences and shape our world that we know today.

Charles Darwin noticed when he went to the Galapagos, the although there were different islands, some of the, and they had similar creatures and plants, many of the animals seem to have adapted to their local environments.

And for example, he found the finches, which are types of birds, have different beaks on each island, and he thought, "Huh, why do they all have different beaks?" And this was because there was certain insects on each island that the birds had to adapt so that their beaks were longer or shorter so that they could eat the insects and not go hungry.

He was a British scientist and he is known for his work on natural selection.

He found out that animals are better adapted.

The better adapted animals are likely to survive.

An example of this is that giraffes, over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years have developed really long necks.

So the ones that had really short necks and couldn't reach the branches unfortunately they died, but the ones that had longer necks and could eat, they would reproduce and have more giraffes who would have long necks.

And eventually over the hundreds of years, there were lots of giraffes who have evolved to have long necks.

And he proved that all the species on Earth had evolved from earliest species.

So giraffes with long necks had evolved from other giraffes that have shorter necks, so over time they have changed.

You how worked so, so hard.

Fantastic job, team.

I'll see you next time.