Lesson video

Hello.

My name is Ms. Chorekdjian.

I'm so excited to be learning with you today.

I will be guiding you through our lesson.

We are going to do some great learning together.

Let's get started.

Welcome to today's lesson from our unit called "Seasons: How Does the Weather Change Through the Year?" This lesson is called "Weather and the Seasons: Autumn." Your learning outcome will be to think like a geographer in the school grounds, to notice, locate, and explore signs of autumn.

Some of this learning is brand new, but I'm here to help you.

This links back to previous learning you might have done about the weather.

You might be able to name basic weather elements and notice how weather changes between the seasons.

You might have done some simple observations of weather and use different equipment to measure and map the weather in your school grounds.

You might also have some knowledge about Earth's movement and how the Sun gives us night and day and the seasons.

And you might have also explored the signs of spring and summer.

Here are the key words that we will be using together throughout today's lesson.

Before we find out what these key words mean, let's practise saying them together using my turn, your turn.

Autumn.

Autumn.

Seasons.

Seasons.

Daylight.

Daylight.

Good job, everyone.

Let's find out what these key words mean.

Autumn.

Autumn is the season between summer and winter.

In the UK, we experience autumn in September, October and November.

Seasons, the seasons are four times a year that have different weather and they are spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Daylight, daylight is a time when the natural light from the Sun lights the sky.

Well done, everyone.

I want you to be using these keywords throughout our lesson as well.

Here are the learning cycles that we will be completing together in today's lesson.

First, we're going to think about why we have autumn, and then we're going to think about what signs of autumn we can observe.

I'm really excited about today.

I hope you are too.

Let's begin our learning.

Seasons show us how the weather changes over a year.

You might have seen this image before.

It's an image of a park through the different seasons in a year, and you can see how the plants and trees are changing over time in those different seasons.

In the UK, we experience four seasons in one year.

Remember that one full orbit of the Sun takes one year, and that's about 365 and a quarter days.

The length of daylight also changes between seasons in the UK, and we'll learn about why that happens later.

The four seasons we experience in the UK are called winter, spring, summer and autumn.

And this picture here shows you a tree and how that tree looks in each of those seasons.

This is what it looks like in winter, spring, summer, and autumn.

So today we're going to be focusing on autumn and the signs that we have that show us it's autumn.

It is autumn in the UK in September, October and November.

So you can see some photos here showing us autumn.

Autumn comes after summer and before winter.

So you can see the skies are still bright and blue, but the leaves are beginning to change colour, and all of those plants and vegetables that were growing in summer are now ready to harvest in autumn.

Let's have a quick check here.

"In the UK, which months fall in autumn?" A, September; B, October; C, November; or D, December.

Pause the video here and complete that check.

How did you get on? Were you able to say that September, October and November fall in autumn? Good job.

Well done if you did.

You can give yourselves a big thumbs up.

When the Earth orbits the Sun, the places tilted away from the Sun experience colder seasons like autumn and winter.

In autumn, the days start to get cooler, and there are fewer hours of daylight, and that's because, like we said, the part of the Earth where the UK is located is beginning to tilt away from the Sun.

This is because this part of Earth starts to tilt away from the Sun.

The Sun's heat is further away, so it feels cooler.

During this stage of Earth's orbit, there are fewer hours of daylight for this part of Earth because it spends less time facing the Sun and more time facing away.

So you can see the shift in hours of daylight all depends on Earth's position and how closely it's tilted towards or tilted, in this case, away from the Sun.

It's now time for Task A.

What I would like you to do is to complete the following sentences.

You've got some words below that you can use to fill in the gaps to make these sentences explain why we have autumn.

I'm going to read them through with you so that you know what they say.

"It is autumn in the UK in September, October, and mm.

In autumn the day start to get mm, and there are mm hours of mm.

This is because parts of mm is tilted away from the mm." The words that you can choose from to fill in those gaps are fewer, cooler, November, daylight, Earth and Sun.

Pause the video Here and complete Task A.

How did you get on completing these sentences? Shall we go through them together? "It is autumn in the UK in September, October and November.

In autumn, the days start to get cooler and there are fewer hours of daylight.

This is because part of Earth is tilted away from the Sun." Good job, everyone.

Well done if you've got those right.

If you've confused some of your words and you've put them in the wrong places, you can use this time now to correct your answers to make sure that all of your sentences are correct.

That way you'll know why we have autumn.

Pause the video here and make any corrections that you need to, or you can just continue with the lesson.

Now we've looked at why we have autumn.

We're going to move on and start thinking about what signs of autumn we can observe.

We can see signs of autumn by observing weather, plants and animals.

There you can see the images that I've shown you earlier on in the lesson.

Do you know any signs of autumn? So you can use these images that I've briefly explained or anything else that you might know is a sign of autumn.

Don't worry if you don't know because we're going to go through them later.

I just want to see if you know any before we start.

Pause the video here and answer that question.

Good job, so you might have said there that some trees start to have their leaves change colour.

They change colour to brown, yellow, red, or even orange.

And you might have said that some of the fruit and vegetable that started to grow in summer are beginning to be ripe now and ready for harvest.

We can see signs of autumn by observing the weather, plants and animals.

Some things we can look out for include if we look at plants, we can see that leaves begin to change colour.

Not all trees have leaves that change colour.

Some trees are evergreen, which means that they stay green.

Other trees are deciduous.

Those are the trees have leaves that change colour.

There's going to be some fruit to harvest.

You might see some seeds being dispersed from trees.

And there will also be cooler temperatures and less hours of daylight.

Now let's think about animals and the changes and signs that we would see in animals to let us know that it's autumn.

You might see some birds migrating.

That means that they will fly away and move to warmer climates to stay warm in the winter.

And animals might prepare for hibernation.

That means they get ready to have a long sleep through the cold months of winter.

We'll find out more about what these signs are later on in the lesson.

Let's have a quick check here first.

Signs of autumn include: A, seeds falling from trees; B, fruit and vegetables to harvest; C, leaves changing colour; or D, honeysuckle grows.

Pause the video here and complete this check.

How did you get on? Were you able to say that these were the signs of autumn: seeds falling from trees, fruit and vegetables to harvest, and leaves changing colour? Good job.

Well done if you said those answers.

They're all correct.

You can give yourselves another big thumbs up.

If you remember correctly, honeysuckle starts to grow in the summer, so I was trying to trick you there.

Well done if you were able to name all of these signs of autumn.

In autumn, some leaves change colour.

They might change to a yellow, orange, red and brown colour.

There you can see some pictures that show you the leaves changing colour.

In autumn, there's fruit to harvest, fruit like blackberries, elderberries, apples, pears, raspberries, and rhubarb.

So this is a time where there's lots of fruit to harvest.

There's also vegetables to harvest as well.

Trees disperse their seeds in autumn.

Disperse means they spread out their seeds, and that means that those seeds have the potential to grow new trees in different areas.

We see seeds like acorns, conkers, pine cones and sycamore seeds.

So there you can see different examples of seeds that are all dispersed from trees in autumn.

Let's have a quick check here.

"Which seeds are dispersed in autumn?" A, Sycamore; B, conkers; C, walnuts; or D, acorns.

Pause the video here and complete this check.

How did you get on? Were you able to name the correct seeds that are dispersed in autumn? Did you say sycamore, conkers and acorns are all dispersed in autumn? Good job.

Well done if you did.

You can give yourselves another big thumbs up.

During autumn, temperatures begin to get cooler and there are fewer hours of daylight, which makes the days feel shorter.

Remember we said this is because the parts of the Earth where the UK is located, during autumn, it starts to tilt away from the Sun, so that means it starts to feel colder and the days feel like they're getting shorter because there's less hours of daylight.

So when you walk home from school, you might notice that it's already beginning to get dark.

You may be able to see the first frost on some plants, and that shows you that the temperatures are starting to get cooler and might even be quite cold.

That's what the first frost looks like on grass.

Here's what it looks like on some leaves, and what it looks like on some raspberries that haven't been picked yet.

You are able to see the first signs of frost because of those cooler temperatures and because there are fewer hours of daylight.

Now we've looked at the signs that we see in plants.

Let's look at the signs that we see in animals.

Many birds, including swans, nightingales, cuckoos, swifts and swallows fly south to warmer climates in autumn ahead of the winter.

So you might see them flying in that V formation.

They fly south because they want to go to warmer temperatures so that they can survive through that winter period.

Autumn is a time of preparation for mammals like mice, hedgehogs and squirrels.

They fatten themselves up by eating as much as possible from the autumn harvest to be ready to hibernate in the winter months.

So that means that these mammals will eat lots of the fruit and vegetables that are harvested during autumn, or they're ready for harvest during autumn, so that they fatten up and they've got lots of fat on them that keeps them warm and gives them that energy that they need to sleep through the winter months.

They might wake up very rarely, but most of them stay asleep throughout winter so that they don't have to forage and find food in those cold and dark winter months.

So autumn is a time of preparation for these animals.

It's time for a quick true or false check here.

That means you've got to read this statement and see if you think it's true or false.

"Animals prepare for winter during autumn." Is that true or false? Pause the video Here and answer that check.

How did you get on? Did you say true? That's correct.

Animals do prepare for winter during autumn.

Let's think about why now.

Can you explain why that statement is true? Pause the video and tell your partner why that statement is true.

You could have said something like, "Many birds fly south in autumn in order to spend winter in warmer climates.

Some mammals prepare to hibernate during winter by fattening up on fruit and nuts in autumn." So that explains why animals prepare for winter during autumn.

Good job, everyone.

Well done if you got that right.

You can give yourselves a big thumbs up.

Geographers observe changes to plants and animals over time and between seasons.

This helps us to look for patterns and understand how things in the natural world are connected with each other.

So remember we've talked about all of those fruits and vegetables and nuts being dispersed and ready for harvest in autumn, and that's what some mammals use to eat to fatten themselves up ready for winter.

So that's just one way that plants and animals are connected.

So if we study them and we observe these changes over time, we are more able to understand these connections.

We can make and compare seasonal maps of the school grounds to help us talk about these changes.

A seasonal map will show something and how different it is in the seasons.

So this picture, for example, shows us this tree and what this tree looks like in different seasons.

We can record the signs of each season that we see on a map or a drawing.

Then we can see how the area in our school changes through the seasons over a year.

It's time to have a quick true or false check here.

So again, you've got to look at this statement and decide whether or not it's true or false.

"Making seasonal maps is not useful for geographers." Pause the video here and answer this check.

How did you get on? Did you say false? That's correct.

Making seasonal maps is useful for geographers.

Let's think about why now.

Can you explain why that statement is false? Why is it important and useful for geographers to make seasonal maps? Pause the video here and explain why.

You could have said something like, "Making seasonal maps is useful for geographers because it helps them to look for patterns and understand how things in the natural world are connected to each other." Well done if you said something similar.

You can give yourself another big thumbs up.

Good job, everyone, you're doing really well in today's lesson.

Your observations could include writing notes, drawings, recording information in tables and taking photographs.

It's now time to complete Task B.

What I would like you to do is to explore your school grounds and look for signs of autumn.

You can use this grid to help you record what you see.

So in the grid you can see all the signs of autumn are listed in the column on the left.

Signs like leaves changing colour, fruit and vegetables ready to harvest, seed dispersal, cooler temperatures and less daylight, birds migrating and animals preparing for hibernation.

And what you've got to do is, if you spot it in school during your observations, you can write yes or no next to it to help you record what you see.

After you've done that, I want you to use the grid to help you to create a seasonal map of your observations.

Pause the video Here and complete Task B.

How did you get on with Task B? Here are the signs of autumn that I spotted in my school grounds.

I did see leaves changing colour, so I've written yes.

I did see some fruit and vegetables ready to harvest, so, again, I've written yes.

I saw some acorns and conkers, so I've written yes because I've seen some seeds being dispersed.

And I've noticed that the temperatures are cooler and that there is less daylight.

So I've written yes there.

I haven't seen any birds migrating, and I haven't seen any animals preparing for hibernation.

So I've written no in that column.

And then what I've done is I've used all of that information to help build up my seasonal map of my school grounds.

So I've drawn a picture there of birds migrating.

I've drawn a smaller Sun, because the days are starting to get shorter and it's starting to feel colder.

And I've drawn a tree with leaves changing and some sycamore seeds dropping to the ground.

I've also written some notes there to help me remember the signs of autumn.

Good job, everyone.

You've worked really hard there thinking like a geographer in your school grounds to notice, locate, and explore the signs of autumn.

You can give yourselves one last thumbs up.

We've now come to the end of our lesson, so let's go through a quick summary of all the learning that we've completed together today.

It is autumn in the UK in September, October and November.

In autumn, the days start to get colder and there are fewer hours of daylight.

We can see signs of autumn by observing the weather, plants and animals.

We can make and compare seasonal maps of the school grounds to us talk about these changes.

Good job, everyone.

You've been fantastic today.

You can give yourselves one last thumbs up.

Thank you for joining me and for sharing your learning with me.

I'll see you really soon for more geography lessons.

Goodbye.