Lesson video

Hello.

My name is Ms. Chorekdjian.

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

I will be guiding you through every step of our geography lesson today.

We are going to have a great time learning together.

Let's start our learning journey.

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: Winter.

Your learning outcome will be to think like a geographer in the school grounds, to notice, locate, and explore signs of winter.

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 weather elements and notice how it changes between seasons.

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

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

You might have also thought about the signs of spring, summer, and autumn.

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

Before we find out what they mean, let's practise saying them together, doing my turn, your turn.

Winter.

Winter.

Seasons.

Seasons.

Daylight.

Daylight.

Good job, everyone.

Let's find out what these key words mean.

Winter.

Winter is the season between autumn and spring.

In the UK, we experience winter in December, January and February.

Seasons.

The seasons are four times of year that have different weather, and they are spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Daylight.

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

Good job, everyone.

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

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

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

Are you ready to start your learning for today? I hope so.

I'm really excited about this lesson.

Let's start our lesson seasons.

Seasons show us how the weather changes over a year.

So we've got this image that we've looked at before, showing us this park throughout the different seasons.

This helps us to identify what signs we can see linked to each season.

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

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

The length of daylight also changes between seasons in the UK, and that's linked to the Earth's movement and orbit around the Sun, which we'll talk about a bit later on in the lesson.

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

And you can see here the picture of the tree that shows us what it looks like in different seasons.

Here's what it looks like in winter, spring, summer, and autumn.

Today's focus is going to be winter.

Let's have a quick check here.

What are the four seasons? A, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, B, spring, sunny, autumn, and winter, C, September, summer, autumn, and winter, or D, spring, summer, August, and winter.

Pause the video here and complete this check.

How did you get on? Were you able to identify the four seasons? Did you say spring, summer, autumn, and winter? Good job.

Well done if you did.

You can give yourselves a big thumbs up.

It is winter in the UK during December, January, and February.

There in those images you can see a few of the signs of winter.

It looks really cold and there's some snow on some dead sunflower plants.

You could also see that the trees have lost all of their leaves and their branches are bare.

Winter comes after autumn and before spring.

Let's have a quick check here.

In the UK, which months fall in winter? A, February, B, January, C, November, or D December.

Pause the video here and complete this check.

How did you get on? Were you able to say that February, January, and December all fall in the season of winter? Good job.

Well done if you did.

November is in autumn.

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

So in autumn, the part of the Earth where the UK is located starts to tilt away from the Sun.

And in winter, it's fully tilted away from the Sun, and that's why it's colder, that's why there are a few hours of daylight.

In winter, it is the coldest time of year, and the days have the fewest hours of daylight of the year.

This is because this part of Earth is tilted away from the Sun.

The Sun's heat is at its furthest point away, so it feels colder.

During this stage of Earth's orbit.

This part of Earth experiences the least hours of daylight because it spends the least time facing the Sun and the most time facing away.

So that's why in winter it's a lot colder and there are the fewest hours of daylight in the year.

It's now time for task A.

What I would like you to do is to complete the following sentences to explain why we have winter.

Let's go through these sentences together.

It is winter in mm in December, January, and mm.

Winter is the mm time of year and has the mm hours of daylight.

This is because this part of Earth is tilted mm from the mm.

Words that you can use are in the box at the bottom.

The words you can choose from are fewest, coldest, the UK, away, February, and Sun.

Pause the video here and complete task A.

How did you get on completing task A? Let's go through these sentences together.

It is winter in the UK in December, January, and February.

Winter is the coldest time of year and has the fewest hours of daylight.

This is because this part of Earth is tilted away from the Sun.

Good job everyone.

Well done if you were able to complete those sentences correctly.

If you've put a few of them in the wrong place, don't worry.

It's your time now to change them to make sure you've completed them correctly.

Now we've looked at why we have winter.

Let's move on to looking at the signs of winter that we can observe.

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

So we've looked at these two images before, the image of the dead sunflowers with snow on them and also the image of the snow-covered park with trees that have lost all of their leaves and have bare branches.

Do you know any signs of winter? So you can use these two pictures to have this discussion with your partner or you could talk about any other signs of winter that you might know.

Don't worry if you don't know anymore.

We're going to go through them later, but I just want to see what you know so far.

Pause the video here and answer this question.

Good job, everyone.

We'll be going through these signs later on in the lesson.

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

Some things we can look out for include, if we're looking at plants, some trees lose all their leaves, no spring and summer flowers, frost on grass and trees, and colder temperatures as well as less daylight.

Now if we look at the animals, we can see that some animals go into hibernation, and that means that they sleep during those cold winter months.

And we can also see robins singing on bare branches during winter.

That's why lots of Christmas cards have robins sitting on bare branches with snow around them.

Let's have a quick check here.

Signs of winter include A, bare branches on trees, B, frost on grass and trees, C, leaves changing colour, or D, some animals hibernate.

Pause a video now and answer this check.

How did you get on? Were you able to say that bare branches on trees, frost on grass and trees, and some animals going into hibernation are signs of winter? Good job.

Well done if you did.

You can give yourselves another big thumbs up.

Leaves changing colour starts to happen in the season of autumn, not winter.

Winter is when the trees begin to lose their leaves and they end up with the branches that are bare.

Some trees lose all their leaves in winter.

Some trees, which are called evergreen trees, stay green throughout the year.

So we're not focusing on those trees.

We're focusing on the trees that are called deciduous trees, and that means that, in autumn, their leaves start to change colour.

And by the time it's winter, all of those leaves fall to the ground leaving bare branches.

They're the same trees whose leaves change colour in autumn.

There are hardly any flowers in winter.

So there you can see a snowy scene of all of those bare branches in the woodland, or you can see a cooler winter day.

There isn't any snow there, but that tree has lost all of its leaves.

Frost appears on leaves and trees, and that's a result of the colder temperatures.

It might even snow in winter.

So there you can see frost on grass, frost on some leaves, and also frost on any fruit that hasn't been picked.

In winter, it is the time of year and there are the fewest hours of daylight.

So you might need to have a really thick winter coat on during this season, and you might notice that, by the time you get home from school, it's already beginning to get dark.

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

that means you've got to look at this statement and decide if it's true or false.

In winter, days are hot and long because there are the most hours of daylight.

Is that true or false? Pause the video here and answer this check.

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

In winter, the days are cold and they feel short because there are the fewest hours of daylight.

So let's think about explaining why this statement is false.

Pause the video here and explain why.

Did you say something like this? This is because, as the Earth orbits the sun, places in winter are tilted away from the Sun, so they have colder temperatures and less daylight.

Good job, everyone.

Well done if you said that.

You can give yourself another thumbs up.

Let's move on with our learning.

Winter is a time when mammals like mice, hedgehogs, and squirrels hibernate.

This means they go to sleep to avoid having to forage for food in cold, dark months.

Remember we talked about these types of animals fattening themselves up in autumn.

So they feed themselves on all of the fruit, vegetables, and nuts that are around in autumn so that they go into a long deep sleep to avoid having to forage for food in those cold and dark months.

And this is how some animals survive the winter.

This is because the conditions in winter are really hard.

It's hard to find food.

It's hard to stay warm.

In winter, robins can be heard and seen singing on bare branches.

There you can see a robin singing on that bare branch, and you can also see a robin there singing on these branches, and it's also quite snowy.

So again, that shows you that that's happening during the season of winter.

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 to each other.

So that helps us to understand and explain all of these relationships in nature between plants and animals, things that we've talked about before, like animals going into hibernation to avoid the cold, harsh winter.

And they're able to do that because they can fatten themselves up during the harvest in autumn.

So they eat all of the fruit, vegetables and nuts that are around during autumn, and that helps them to survive the cold, harsh winter.

Understanding these relationships is really important to us as geographers.

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

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

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

So we are going to add to our seasonal maps that we've created in previous lessons, similar to this image here, showing the tree in the different seasons, and this helps us reflect and talk about the changes that we see throughout the year to our school grounds.

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

Let's have a quick check here.

Observations include A, taking photographs, B, writing notes, C, drawings, or D, making phone calls.

Pause the video now and see if you can complete that sentence.

How did you get on? Did you say that observations can include taking photographs, writing notes, and drawings? Good job.

Well done if you did.

You can give yourselves another big thumbs up.

You've worked really hard throughout today's lesson.

It's now time for task B.

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

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

In the column on the left, there are the signs of winter, things like trees losing their leaves, colder days with less daylight, frost on grass and trees, animals hibernating and robins singing.

If you see each of those different signs of winter, you can say yes or no if you spot it in school, and you can record that in the column on the right.

Once you've used that grid to help you record what you see, I'd like you to create a seasonal map of your observations.

Pause the video here and complete task B.

Well, geographers, how did you get on with task B? Here's what I've recorded in my table.

So I did see trees losing their leaves, so I've written yes.

I did notice that the days were colder and there was less daylight.

So again, I've written yes.

I did notice some frost on the grass and some trees.

So again, I've written yes to show me that I've seen that.

I didn't see any animals hibernating, so I've written no, but I did see some robins sat on bare branches and I could hear them singing.

So again, I've written yes for that.

Once I've completed my table, I've then used this to help me create my seasonal map of my school grounds.

So you can see that I've added there to the seasonal map that I created in the spring, summer, and autumn.

I've drawn a picture there of frost on grass.

I've also drawn a picture there of frost on trees with their bare branches.

The Sun is really small because that represents that the days are colder and that there are less hours of daylight, and I've also drawn some snow falling to the ground from the sky.

I've written all of the signs of winter next to it as well.

So you can finally see how I've built up my seasonal map of my school grounds to show me what it looks like in all of those different seasons.

I hope you've been able to do that as well, and that you can see now the differences that happens between seasons to the weather, plants, and animals.

Well done, everyone.

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

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

It is winter in the UK in December, January, and February.

Winter is the coldest time of year that has the fewest hours of daylight.

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

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

Well done, everyone.

You've been fantastic today.

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

I'll see you next time for more geography Lessons soon.

Goodbye.