Lesson video

My name is Mr. Robertson and it's fantastic to be learning with you today.

Here's a new unit of work and the question that we are going to be answering is Europe: how diverse are its landscapes and places? I'm really excited about this unit and I can't wait to get started with you today.

Today's lesson's outcome is this.

I can use atlas maps and the globe to locate the continent and countries of Europe.

We've got some keywords today, so I'm going to say them and then I'm gonna ask you to say them back.

So our first word is this.

Continent.

Brilliant.

Location.

And it's well done.

Globe.

Easy, and finally, atlas map.

Fabulous.

You said those brilliantly.

And let's find out what they mean, shall we? Okay, so a continent is a large land mass on Earth and there are seven: Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania.

A location is the particular position of something on Earth.

A globe is a map of Earth on a sphere.

And atlas maps show the location of places and features at a global or national scale.

Those keywords are going to come up during our lesson.

So let's get started.

There are three parts to our lesson today.

Part one, we're going to ask what do we already know about Europe? Next, we're going to move on to locating the continent of Europe.

And finally, we're going to look at locating the countries in Europe.

Are you ready to explore Europe? Let's go.

As geographers, when we start a new unit of work or a new topic, it's really good to think a little bit about what we already know.

So in this unit, we're going to be learning about the continent of Europe.

And here are some questions.

Aisha's asking, "What do you already know about this continent?" And Jum is saying, "Where does this knowledge come from?" So if you've got someone to talk to, pause the video now and let's think about these questions, what you already know and where does this knowledge come from? And here're some of your ideas.

Now, when we think about what we already know, it's useful to think really carefully so we can identify any gaps.

In other words, we might know some things, but what might we not know as well and what we need to find out? So there are some big questions here.

Aisha is asking, "What is a continent?" You might have done learning about a continent at some other point in school and remember what that word means.

She's also asking, "What is Europe like?" Do you know anything about Europe? Can you describe it at all? What comes into your mind when you hear that word? Jun is asking, "Which countries are located in Europe?" Can you think of any? And can you name important landmarks or major cities in Europe? Maybe you've travelled in Europe, maybe some of your friends or relatives have been there.

Can you think of any places that they might have visited or any things they might have seen? Again, pause the video and talk around you.

As well as thinking what we know about Europe itself, we might also want to think about where does this information come from? We might have learned about Europe in school in a previous topic.

Friends or family may have been to Europe.

We might have looked at something on the internet.

We might have books which can give us useful information or we might have have seen some programmes on television.

All of these sources of information can help bring us some knowledge, which is gonna be really helpful in the topic we're gonna explore today.

So I want to think about this true or false question.

When you learn about a topic, it's useful to think about any existing knowledge we already have.

Is that true or is that false? Pause the video.

Let's have a think about that.

You said.

Yeah, absolutely right, well done.

It is true.

It is really useful to think about any existing knowledge we already have.

We're all learning about a topic in geography.

Now, why is that? Here are going to be some answers to help justify why this is true.

A, thinking what we know already helps us to identify any gaps in our knowledge.

Or B, thinking about what we know already will prove we have nothing else to learn.

Which of those is a better reason do you think why this is true? Pause the video anad have to think.

Absolutely, you're amazing.

Well done.

Thinking about what we know already helps us identify any gaps in our knowledge.

When we use our prior learning, that can help think what we need to know going forwards.

Here is going to be a task for you to do.

We can use a spider diagram to show what we already know about Europe.

This is a spider diagram.

You can see we've got the word Europe in the middle.

That's the topic that we're going to be investigating.

And around the outside, we've got different groups of information.

So we've got landmarks, people, countries, climate.

That means what the weather is like in Europe.

Cities and food.

These are all ways in which we might classify different pieces of knowledge we might already have about Europe.

A spider diagram is really useful because it helps us organise the information.

Our spider diagram can add to the categories.

So for example, we might know some countries in Europe, so we might say yes, of course, France is in Europe, Italy's in Europe, Poland is in Europe.

They are all different countries in Europe.

We might also know some things about different foods we might find in Europe.

So we might say aha, omelette, that's a food that people might eat in Europe or pizza, of course.

Pizza or borscht.

All of these are examples of different sorts of food in Europe might eat.

And so we can put the countries in the part of the spider diagram where it says countries and foods could be grouped somewhere else.

And this way, we're building up a picture of all our existing knowledge, things we already know about Europe.

So your task is going to be this.

I'd like you to create a spider diagram to think about your existing knowledge and ideas.

Think about what we said a while ago about different places.

You might have this information.

Maybe information from family and friends, maybe information you've seen on the internet or on a television programme.

Have a go at creating the spider diagram and think what do I know about different countries, landmarks, food, cities or climate.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what you found out.

So here are some examples of things you might have found out.

Yours might look similar to this.

You might have different information.

That doesn't matter because we all have different sorts of knowledge.

We've already looked at some countries like France, Italy and Poland, and we looked at some possible foods, like omelette, pizza or borscht.

You might have added your own countries or own examples of food in as well.

How about some landmarks you might find in Europe? Oh yes, we've got the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

We've got the Matterhorn.

That's a huge amazing mountain in Europe.

And we've got Parthenon.

If you did ancient Greek in school, you might have discovered that as well in Greece.

We've got some cities.

We've got Madrid, the capital of Spain, we've got Berlin, the capital of Germany and Oslo, the capital of Norway.

And finally, what might we know about the climate in Europe? We've got the word temperate.

Temperate climate, like we have in the UK, a Mediterranean climate, places that experience, that might be places like Spain or Italy.

And finally, we've got a polar climate as well, places far up in the north in Scandinavia, like Norway or Sweden.

Iceland might experience a polar climate.

Part of our lesson today is this: locating the continent of Europe.

Europe is a continent.

If you remember from our keywords, a continent is defined for a group of countries on a large land mass.

Now, you might have heard this word continent before.

I want you to think how many continents are there in the world? Talk to your talk partner or pause your video.

How many continents are there in the world? Were you right? Jun says there are seven continents in the world.

Well done if you got that correct.

So can you name the seven continents? Yeah, we've got Africa.

We can see it there in yellow in the middle of our map.

Antarctica right down in the south, all down there.

Asia, a huge continent.

North America and South America, Europe, which we're studying now.

You can see it in green in the middle of our map there.

And Oceania.

Well done if you could name all those continents.

Okay, a quick check for learning.

How many continents are there in the world? Are there five? Are there six or are there seven? Pause the video, have a think.

Let's see if you're right.

Yes, correct.

There are seven continents in the world.

Well done, geographers if you got that correct.

Now, another question.

Which of the following is not a continent? Africa, B, Antarctica, C, Arctic, D, Asia.

Which of those is not a continent? Pause the video and have a think.

Good luck.

Absolutely right.

Well done.

Arctic is not a continent.

It's a big area of ice right in the north of the globe, but it's not a continent.

Well done.

Now, both atlas maps and a globe can be used to locate the continent of Europe.

So what is an atlas map? Well, an atlas map is something which represents the world in two dimensions.

That means that they're flat, they only have height or width.

But our world is actually in three dimensions.

It has height, weight, and depth.

And so that can pose quite a problem for geographers.

The best way to view our world is a globe.

Maybe you have a globe in your classroom.

Maybe you have a globe at home.

That is a three-dimensional model and that is the best way to understand what the world is like.

However, this can be really, really difficult because as our world is in three dimensions, it's really difficult to represent in a two-dimensional map.

You could try this for yourself.

Get an orange or a satsuma and by taking the peel off as much as you can, doesn't matter if it's not the whole peel, and try spreading it out.

Can you see what happens? If you draw the world on the skin before you do it and spread it out, you'll see it's really hard to spread it out.

You kind of have to tear the peel and then it doesn't look quite right.

So this is a really complex idea in geography about how do we take three-dimensional views and turn them into two dimensional.

Let's do them for you here.

True or false? A globe is a more accurate representation of the world than an atlas map.

Is that true or false? Have a think.

You are right.

It is, it's true.

A globe is more accurate than an atlas map because a globe is in three dimensions, like our world itself.

And justify our answer here.

A, is a globe a three-dimensional model of the world, or B, is an atlas map a three-dimensional model of the world? Okay? Yes, you're correct.

A globe is a three-dimensional model of the world.

Is located in the northern hemisphere.

That means it's north of the equator, which is an imaginary line around the middle of the world.

It is the second smallest continent.

You can see it there in green.

Oceania is the smallest continent in the world.

Which of these statements describe the location of Europe? I want you to select two answers.

A, bordered by the Atlantic ocean.

B, bordered by the Pacific Ocean.

C, in the northern hemisphere.

Or D, in the southern hemisphere.

Which two answers are true? Talk to the person next to you.

Let's see if you're right.

Europe is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, which is the ocean between Europe and North America.

And C, it's in the northern hemisphere, which is to the north of the equator.

Well done if you got those right.

So our second task for today is this.

You are going to locate Europe and the other continents on a globe and an atlas map.

You can see an atlas map in front of you.

I'd like to find different continents and label them very clearly so know wheret they all are.

Be very careful of the spellings and make sure you use a capital letter.

See if you were right.

We have in orange North America, in brown, South America, Europe in green, Africa in yellow, Asia in white and Oceania in red and down in the south, Antarctica.

Well done if you managed to label those correctly.

Brilliant geography work.

Our final part of the lesson is this.

We're going to locate the countries in Europe.

Start our learning here.

So we've done some thinking about what a continent is.

A continent is a large land mass.

Now we're going to think about countries.

Countries are part of what makes up a continent.

It's widely agreed there are 44 countries in Europe.

That's a lot of countries, isn't it? This includes Russia.

Russia is an enormous country, the largest country in the world.

Part of Russia is in Asia.

Part of it spreads to the borders of Europe.

An interesting country, which is also part of Europe is Turkey.

Most of Turkey is found in the continent of Asia, but a small part of it, western Istanbul, is considered part of Europe.

Europe extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Asia in the east.

If you carry up into the north, you get to an Arctic Circle.

And down in the south, it's bordered by the Mediterranean sea.

Which country in Europe is the farthest north? It's an interesting geography question, isn't it? I wonder what clues we might use in the map to help us answer that question.

Talk to the person next to you, have a little think.

Aisha says, "Norway is farthest north if you include the Norwegian island of Svalbard." If you look at the map on your screen, you can see the country of Iceland, which is incredibly far north and above that, can you see a red island? That belongs to Norway.

It's called Svalbard.

Beautiful, based right up in the Arctic Ocean.

So officially, Norway is farthest north.

Now, as we said, Europe is made up of many different countries.

We could use an atlas map to locate these countries in Europe to find out where they all are.

I wonder what's the three largest countries in Europe? What another interesting geography question.

Can the atlas map on your screen help you with this? Have a little think.

Talk to the person next to you.

Jun says Russia, which we can see in green.

The furthest east is the largest country in Europe.

Then the country of Ukraine, which is on the border of Ukraine at Belarus, you can see it there in orange.

And finally, France, which is just below the United Kingdom in light green.

They are the three largest countries in Europe.

So a question for you about countries in Europe, which of these countries are in Europe? I'd like you to select two answers.

A, Iceland, B, Israel, C, Morocco, or D, Ukraine.

Have a ponder.

Talk to the person next to you.

Let's see if you're right.

Far up in the north of Europe is part of Europe.

Well done if you got that one.

And Ukraine in the east of Europe, bordering Russia.

Both of those countries are in Europe.

Fantastic geography work if you got those right.

Israel is in the continent of Asia and Morocco, you might know this, yes, it's in the continent of Africa.

So they're not in Europe.

Okay, your final task for today is this.

You're going to be locating the countries in Europe.

You're going to use an atlas map.

There'll be one on the worksheet.

And I'd like you to name the countries of Europe.

If you remember, we said there are 44 countries in Europe.

Can you locate and name them all? So roll up your sleeves, put your geography hats firmly on your heads.

Use your map skills and off you go.

Locating and naming the countries of Europe.

Good luck.

I hope you enjoyed that task.

I absolutely love using an atlas map.

It's one of my favourite things to do.

And learning countries I just think is fantastic.

Here are the answers.

44 countries in Europe.

One, Russia, the largest country in Europe, all the way to 44, the Vatican City, which is a tiny little part of the city of Rome, which is the smallest country in Europe.

How many of those did you manage to find? I hope you enjoyed locating those and great geography work, everybody.

Well done.

Let's summarise our learning today.

We've been using maps to locate the countries of Europe.

So what have we learned? We've learned that Europe is a continent.

Its location is in the northern hemisphere.

Europe is the smallest continent.

It has 44 countries.

Europe extends to the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Asia in the east, the Arctic circle in the north to the Mediterranean Sea in the south.

And finally, atlas maps and a globe can be used to locate the countries Europe.

Thanks so much for being part of our learning today.

I've really enjoyed learning about Europe with you.

I look forward to seeing you in another lesson where we're going to be further exploring the amazing diversity within Europe.

Thank you very much.