Lesson video

Hi everyone, my name is Miss Dhillon.

And last lesson you were learning about the countries of Europe.

I am going to say statement, and I want you to think Is it true or is it false? Here's the first one.

Germany is in Western Europe.

Is that true or false? Say out loud.

Good job.

You should have said it's true.

What about Poland? Poland is a Western European country.

Good.

You should have said that's false.

Poland is an Eastern European country.

Okay, now let me test you even more.

Hmm, Norway.

Is it a Southern or a Northern European country? Say out loud.

Good job.

We know that Norway is even further up than United Kingdom, so it's definitely Northern Europe.

And finally, what about Italy? Where is Italy, which region is in? Good job.

You should have said that Italy is in Southern Europe.

Fantastic recall team.

The question we're going to be exploring in today's lesson is, what are the physical features of Europe? This is what the structure of today's lesson is going to look like.

We're going to start with the star words.

We're going to revise our seven continents.

Then we will look at some physical features, for example, mountains and rivers before looking at the four regions of Europe.

And finally, we will end by comparing two regions of Europe.

Please make sure you have all the equipment ready for today's lesson.

On the screen, you can see the star words for today's lesson.

We are now going to say them out loud to practise the key vocabulary.

Are you ready? Europe.

Physical features.

Mount Elbrus.

Volga River.

Danube River.

Rhine River.

Western Uplands.

North European Plain.

Central Uplands.

Alpine Mountains.

Well done team.

Now to start the lesson, I would like you to recap your knowledge of the seven continents.

So have your piece of paper ready and write down all the seven continents missing on this map.

Pause the video now to do that.

Okay team, you can now see the answers on the screen.

Spend a few moment checking your answers.

How did you do this time? Did you beat your score that you've got last time? High five.

Now, just to remind you, we are looking at the continent of Europe, and I've circled it on the map to remind you where it is.

Now, team, it's important to understand that geography has two branches, one is physical geography, and the other is human geography.

Today, we are focusing on physical geography, which is a branch of geography dealing with the natural features.

Now we're going to learn about the tallest mountain in Europe.

The tallest mountain in Europe is called Mount Elbrus.

My turn, your turn, Mount Elbrus.

This mountain stands at 5,642 metres above sea level, and it is located in the Caucasus Mountains in Southern Russia, which is near the border of Georgia.

You can see this on the map and it is a red pin on the map.

An interesting fact about Mount Elbrus is that it is a dormant volcano, which means it is not active, and it was formed more than 2.

5 million years ago.

The most dangerous aspect of climbing Mount Elbrus is actually the weather.

Storms can occur really suddenly bringing really extremely cold and windy weather.

Pause the video now to complete the task on the screen.

Here is the answer.

Did you also say b? Thumbs up if you did.

Well done.

Now we're going to look at a mountain rage.

One of the most well known mountain ranges in Europe is the Alps.

My turn, your turn, Alps.

On the map, you can see on the right hand corner that this is a section of the map that we have zoomed into.

So where there is the grey map in the corner, we are zooming in to that part of the map.

The Alps are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe and it stretches approximately 1,200 kilometres and it goes through eight Alpine countries.

I would now like you to look very closely at the map.

See if you can point out all eight countries through which the Alps go through.

The darker parts on the map is where the Alps are.

Okay team, now let's go through the answers.

You can see these in the red circles.

You should have said that the Alps runs through France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia.

High five if you've got some of those.

Well done for interpreting the map.

Now, last year I was very lucky to go and visit the Alps and I went to do some hiking in the Julian Alps which are in Slovenia.

Here are some photos of my trip.

Looking at these photos, I wonder if you would like to visit the Julian Alps.

We are now going to learn about some important rivers in Europe.

There are lots of rivers in Europe and they have provided important transportation and travel for people throughout history.

Most of Europe is accessible by water transport, either via the many rivers or along through the extensive coastlines of the peninsulas and islands.

There are two main rivers that divide Europe.

The first one is the River Danube.

The Danube flows East through various major European countries such as Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade before emptying out into the Black Sea.

So the mouth of this river is the Black Sea.

Have a look at the map a bit more closely.

Look to see if you can point to the Black Sea on the map.

Okay, hopefully you were looking very carefully and this is where it is.

Well done if you managed to find it.

Pause the video now to complete the task on the screen.

Did you say the answer was false? Well done if you got that correct.

I was trying to trick you.

So the answer is the Black Sea not the Red Sea.

The second river that is an important river that divides Europe is the Rhine.

This river has its source in Switzerland, and it mainly flows through Germany and the Netherlands as you can see on the map.

The Rhine flows North upwards and empties in the North Sea in Rotterdam, which is in Holland, which is one of the busiest ports in the world.

Now we're going to look at the longest river in Europe.

So the Danube and Rhine are really important because they divide Europe and the longest river is actually in Russia.

This is called the Volga River.

My turn, your turn, Volga.

Good job.

And the Volga River is very famous for caviar, which is a very famous dish.

You might have seen it before.

Caviar is fish eggs, and the beluga which found in the Volga River produces the world's finest caviar.

Pause the video now to complete the task on the screen.

Here is the answer.

Did you also say b? Well done team.

Now we're going to move on to looking at the four regions of Europe.

Europe can be divided into four major physical regions running from the North to the South.

These are called the Western Uplands, the North European Plains, the Central Uplands and the Alpine Mountains.

We are now going to look at these more closely starting with the Western Uplands.

The Western Uplands is defined by hot ancient rock that was shaped by glaciation.

Glaciation is the process by which land has been transformed by glaciers or ice sheets.

As these glaciers has receded from the area, they have left a number of distinct physical features, including lots of marshlands, which are wetlands, lakes and fjords.

So that word is quite tricky to say, because when we say out loud, it doesn't sound like it is written down.

So it's quite tricky.

So let's have a go saying it out loud.

My turn, your turn, fjords.

Good job team.

A fjord is a long and narrow inlet of sea and is surrounded by high rugged cliffs.

So in that picture you can see the water and how it's surrounded by the cliffs.

Many of European fjords are located in Iceland and in Scandinavia.

Scandinavia includes the countries of Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Now let's have a look at the Northern European Plain.

This extends from the Southern United Kingdom, East to Russia It include parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, and the Baltic states which are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and it also includes Belarus.

Most of the plain lies below 152 metres in elevation.

So it is quite flat.

It is also the home to many rivers including the Rhine River, which we talked about earlier.

The Northern European Plain remains the most densely populated region of Europe.

Pause the video now to complete this task.

Here are the answers.

Did you match them up correctly? Excellent job team.

It's really good that you're staying focused and trying to take on all this new information.

The Central Uplands extends East to West across Central Europe and include Western France and Belgium, Southern Germany, the Czech Republic, and parts of Northern Switzerland and Austria.

The the Central Uplands is much lower in attitude and is very heavily wooded, which means there's lots of words in that area.

Important highlands, which are places of high or mountainous land in this region include the Vosges in France, as you can see in the picture, and Taunus which is in Germany.

This region is sparsely populated, so it's not as densely populated.

And the only exceptions to that is by the river valleys, for example, by the valley of the Rhine, the Alp and the Danube.

Finally, let's have a look at the fourth and final region of Europe.

These are the Alpine Mountains and these include ranges in the Italian and Balkan peninsulas, Northern Spain and Southern France.

The region including the mountains of the Alps, which we have learned about already, the Pyrenees, the Apennines, and the Dinaric Alps, the Balkans and the Carpathians.

So a lot of these regions are part of the Alpine Mountains.

High elevations and steeply sloping land define this region of Europe.

Europe's highest peak, Mount Elbrus, is located in this region.

So you can see it on the screen.

This is located in Russia.

The Alpine region also includes some active volcanoes such as Mount Etna in Italy and Mount Vesuvius which is also in Italy.

Pause the video now to complete the task on the screen.

Make sure you check the words in bold and compare them to your own answers.

If you didn't get some of those correct, that's okay.

Make sure you jot them down because these key words are going to be really important in the next part of our lesson.

Have a look closely at these two different regions of Europe.

On the left hand side, you have Mount Elbrus in Russia, which is in the Alpine Mountains.

On the right hand side, you have Taunus in Germany, which is located in the Central Uplands.

We are going to compare and contrast these two regions.

What do you notice are the differences between them? Take a few moments to think of your answer.

Okay team, so you might have said that in the central woodlands they are at a much lower altitude and they are heavily wooded, whereas in the Alpine Mountains, that is a much higher altitude.

Did you remember what mountains and volcanoes are found in the Alpine Mountains? Say them out loud.

Good job.

So we can see Mount Elbrus, which is on screen, but there's also volcanoes like Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius.

So the Alpine region is much different to the Central Uplands because it has an higher altitude.

There's also a clear difference because it's not wooded, whereas the Central Uplands is.

So this is what makes them different and these are called the physical features.

The physical features of these two regions are very different.

Now I would like you to pause the video to complete the task on the screen.

How is the Alpine Mountains different to the Central Uplands in Europe? In order to complete this task, you need to use the sentence stems on the screen.

Here is an answer, a model answer that you might have written.

Take a few moments reading this answer.

Okay, so the key takeaway is that the regions are significantly different to one another, one is high in altitude whereas the other is much lower in altitude and is also wooded.

One has woods whereas the other has mountains and volcanoes.

So these are the differences that you should have written about.

Okay, so that is now the end of today's lesson.

I hope you had lots of fun learning about some of the physical features of Europe.

Next lesson, we will be learning about the most important human features of Europe.

Bye everyone.

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