Lesson video

My name is Mrs. Gulliver, and I'm going to be with you learning about natural resources today.

We're going to be thinking about what are natural resources and how we use them.

I hope you've got your geography brains with you today.

I've certainly got mine.

Let's get learning.

So by the end of today's lesson, you are going to be able to name some natural resources and describe how they can be used.

Here we've got our keywords, I'll just go through them with.

I'll say it first, and then I'll give you a chance to say each of these keywords.

Our first keyword is resource distribution.

Great, energy.

Minerals.

And our last one is renewable.

Brilliant, so let's have a look at what each of these terms means.

Resource distribution means how resources are spread out across a geographic area.

Energy is the power to make things work.

For example, it may provide heat or light, or it might operate machinery or power electricity.

Minerals are chemical substances which are formed naturally and are found in the ground or in rocks.

And renewable means that something will not be used up or run out.

Our lesson today is going to be split into two parts.

The first part, what are natural resources? And the second, why are natural resources useful? Let's get started with what are natural resources? Natural resources are materials produced by the environment that humans can make use of.

So they are found entirely naturally.

They have not been made, or built, or created by humans.

They have been present in the natural environment.

I've got a lovely picture here of a very natural setting, and I wonder what different natural resources can you see in this picture? Turn to the person next to you, and see what natural resources you can see in the picture.

I'm sure you came up with lots of brilliant ideas.

Laura here said she can see water and wood from trees that are natural resources.

You also might have mentioned rocks that could be used as a natural resource, or perhaps plants as well.

All of these things are found naturally and can be used by humans.

So I've got my first check of the day.

Which of the following is the correct definition for natural resources? A, natural resources are materials that serve no use to humans.

B, natural resources are produced by the environment and people.

Or C, natural resources are materials produced by the environment that humans can make use of.

Have a think whether you think A, B, or C is the correct definition for natural resources.

Well done, that correct definition is C.

Natural resources are materials produced by the environment that humans can make use of.

Now we are going to have a look at all of the different types of natural resources.

And the first type of natural resource that we're gonna have a look at are fuel resources, which we can use to produce energy.

And remember, we learned right at the beginning in those keywords that energy is the power to make things work, and it might be used, like we said, to heat things, to light things, or in generating electricity.

So all of these resources, coal, oil, and natural gas can be used to produce energy, and the way that they produce energy is when they are burned.

So we can burn coal, oil, and natural gas to produce heat, and light, and create electricity.

And these three natural resources, coal, oil, and natural gas, are also known as fossil fuels.

They're our fuel resources.

We also have food resources.

So resources that are found naturally on Earth that we as humans can eat.

We have meat which comes from animals, many different types of meat that we can eat.

We may have beef which comes from cows, pork from pigs, lamb from sheep, or chickens which come from chickens.

There are many fish resources that we can also find in rivers and streams, or even in the oceans.

Examples of cod and salmon that, again, are natural resources, they're found here, and we can use them to eat.

Lastly, there are also plant resources that we can eat.

There's an example here of tomatoes.

I wonder what what other plant resources you can think of that we can use to eat.

Brilliant, you might have thought of some fruit resources such as strawberries or apples that we can eat, or you may have thought of some other vegetable resources such as potatoes or broccoli that we can use to eat.

We can also use plants to help create medicines and clothes.

Cotton comes from the cotton plant, and is used in many different types of clothing.

We also have metallic resources.

Aluminium is the most common metal found on Earth, and is used in many different ways.

You might have seen aluminium foil being used to wrap up food items. It's often used in lots of packaging and household appliances such as fridges and freezers.

Iron is a very common metal that is found and is used often in buildings, or in constructing roads, or making railways, because it's a very strong metal.

Gold you may have seen being used in jewellery.

It's a shiny metal that people like to wear.

There are also lots of mineral resources.

Mineral was one of our keywords, and minerals are chemical substances which are formed naturally and are found in the ground or in rots.

Diamond is an example of a mineral resource, and there are other gems that are also mineral resources which we use, again, often in jewellery.

They are sparkly and they are strong.

Quartz is a mineral resource which is often used in helping to make clocks and watches, and it can also be used in many electronics.

Sand is a mineral resource, and it's great for building sandcastles, so for having fun, but it's also used in lots of the construction industry, and helps us to build things.

So these are non-metallic mineral resources, and again, have many uses for us that we can use them for in our daily life.

Our final two types of natural resources are wood resources and water resources.

Wood is used incredibly commonly to make lots of different things for humans.

Have a look around your classroom, or the room that you are in, and see if you can spot any things that are made of wood.

Well done, you might have seen some furniture that's made of wood, desks, or chairs.

Perhaps you noticed a window frame, or a gore that's made from wood.

You might have picked up a pencil and seen that that is made of wood.

It's used very commonly.

And the final type of natural resource that we use is water resources, which as I'm sure you know, we cannot live without.

We use water as a drink to keep our bodies hydrated.

So water resources are an incredibly important natural resource that we use.

We've covered an awful lot of different types of natural resources, and what I'd like you to do now is have a look at these six images.

Got a picture of water, a picture of football boots, a picture of diamonds, a picture of a laptop, a picture of some meat, and a picture of a brick wall.

And what I would like you to do is identify which of these items are natural resources.

Well done, water, meat, and diamonds are all examples of natural resources in this picture.

We've thought about all sorts of different types of natural resources, and now we're going to think about some of these natural resources being renewable.

Some of them, on the other hand, are not renewable.

Renewable means that something will not be used up or run out.

So there are some resources that we can use, and that are found naturally, that will not run out.

I wonder if you can think of any examples.

Well done, solar power, energy from the sun can be used and will not run out.

We use solar power to heat things, and we can also use it to generate electricity to power things.

So solar power is one example.

Did you think of any others? Yes, great, wind energy can also be used to generate electricity, and once we use wind energy, we can continue on using it again and again.

It will not run out.

We can also use wave and tidal energy, so energy produced by waves and the tides can be used to generate electricity so we can power things.

There's also hydroelectric power, which is used from creating electricity through water, and geothermal energy, which is energy produced from heat within the Earth.

Some natural resources are not renewable.

Once they have been used, they cannot be replaced.

And there's an example there of oil.

Oil is a non-renewable resource.

Can you think of any non-renewable resources apart from oil? Well done, coal is also an example of a non-renewable resource.

Gold is also a non-renewable resource.

All of these examples, once they have been used up, they cannot be used again, and eventually, one day they may run out.

I've got another check for you now.

I'd like you to fill in the blanks for this definition of renewable resources.

Renewable means that something will not be (humming) or (humming).

Have a think and see what you can come up with to go into those two blank.

Well done, spot on.

Renewable means that something will not be used up or run out.

Great.

We're here for our first task of the day.

As you can see, I've got a list of some natural resources, and what I'd like you to do is to tick to show whether each one of these resources is renewable or non-renewable.

I'd also like you to have a think and see if you can come up with any of your own examples of natural resources that are renewable, and natural resources that are non-renewable, which are not included in this list.

Once you've done that, I'd also like you to write a short explanation of how renewable and non-renewable resources are different.

You could jot down a few ideas, or write a short paragraph to explain how those types of natural resource are different.

Well done, I'm sure you ticked all of these in the correct columns.

Oil is a non-renewable resource.

Meat is renewable.

Water also non-renewable.

Plants are renewable.

Sand, gas, diamonds, and aluminium are also non-renewable.

If you thought of some of your own examples, you might have said solar energy, or wave and tidal power are also renewable resources.

You might have added in that coal is a non-renewable resource, as is gold.

You might have come up with some more examples of your own.

Well done! And your short explanation of how renewable and non-renewable resources are different may have looked similar to mine.

Renewable resources will never run out, and can be used to make energy.

Examples of renewable resources are solar power, wind energy, and wave energy.

Non-renewable resources, however, are resources that are limited, and they will run out when we use them.

Examples of non-renewable resources are coal, oil, and natural gas.

Well done, I'm sure you got in those key differences that renewable resources will never run out, whereas non-renewable resources are limited and they will run out when we use them.

Great work so far.

We're going to move on to the second part of our lesson.

Why are natural resources useful? Some natural resources are essential to our life.

We cannot live without them.

Others, on the other hand, are not.

We can make use of them, but we don't need them to live.

Looking back at this beautiful picture we started the lesson with, can you think of any natural resources that are essential to life? That we cannot live without? I've got Laura, again, who's telling me that water is an essential for life.

We cannot live without water.

You might have also mentioned that food is an essential natural resource.

We cannot live without it.

So our two essential natural resources that humans cannot live without are water and food.

So then that means there must be an awful lot of natural resources that are not essential to human life.

Turn to your partner and have a quick think.

Which natural resources are not essential? We do not need them to stay alive to survive.

I'm sure you came up with loads of great examples.

Here were some of mine.

Diamonds and gems are precious and look beautiful, but we do not need them to stay alive.

Quartz is very helpful for creating watches and clocks, and in some electronics, but again, we do not need them for us to stay alive.

Some natural resources have got multiple uses that we can harness.

Oil, for example, is used in many different ways.

One of the main ways that we use oil is as fuel for vehicles.

It gets turned into petrol and it powers our cars.

It can also be used to power aeroplanes and boats as well.

Can you think of any other uses of oil? Oil can be turned into plastic, and is often used for making toys.

It can be used for making frisbees and footballs.

Lots of toddler toys are made out of plastic.

Lego and building blocks are also often made of plastic, which comes from oil.

So again, many uses.

It can also be used for making clothing by being turned into nylon and polyester, and these are often found in many jumpers.

If you have a look at the label inside your clothes, it tells you what they're made of.

And you might be surprised how many are made of nylon and polyester.

Oil can also be used for making things such as Wellington boots and for raincoats to help give things a waterproof nature.

The final use I thought of is that oil can be burnt as we learned.

It is a fuel for generating energy and power, and it can be burnt to heat our homes and businesses.

So lots of different uses for oil.

We're going to have a think now about aluminium as well, because that has many different uses.

Turn to the person next to you.

Can you think of more than one way that we use aluminium in our lives? So aluminium is the most common metal that is found on Earth, so it's great that we can use it in lots of ways.

We can use aluminium for appliances such as fridges and freezers, and it's also often used in air conditioning units.

Obviously, they're useful for storing our food and keeping our food fresher for longer.

Aluminium is used in aircraft construction, so for building aeroplanes to help us trickle around the world.

It's also used in lots of packaging, often for food items, and then it helps keep them fresh.

It's also used as a building material, so there may be items that are parts of windows and doors which are made from aluminium and help us to build houses.

So just one resource can have multiple different uses that we make the most of.

Have a look at these pictures here.

I've got some picture of sand, a picture of gold, and a picture of water.

Which one of the following resources is essential to life? Well done, water.

We cannot live without water.

I've got three more images here, and what I want you to think about again is which one of these following images is essential to life? Which one can we not live without? That's right, we cannot live without food.

Food and water are two essential natural resources that humans cannot live without.

We're gonna have a quick look at resource distribution.

How these natural resources are distributed around the world.

This is a map which shows how mineral resources are distributed around the world.

Where they are found.

It also includes coal and oil.

As you can see, coal is represented by the grey square, and there are lots of countries which have coal, where coal is readily available.

So if you look at the United States of America and Canada, they have lots of areas where they can find coal and use it as a fuel resource.

There are also areas in Southeastern Australia, again, where there's lots of coal that can be used, and across Europe there are many of those grey squares, so areas where they have coal.

However, there are also many places around the world which do not have any coal resources.

If you look at South America, Columbia, Ecuador are some countries which do not have any coal resources found in those countries.

Eastern Africa also has many countries which does not have any coal resources found there.

Countries such as Ethiopia and Somalia do not have coal resources, so they may have to buy these resources in from other areas, or use alternative resources for a fuel resource.

If you have a look at Greenland in the Northern hemisphere, you can see that there are no mineral coal or oil resources found there at all.

So this map makes it very clear that natural resources are unequally distributed around the world.

They do not show that there is an equal number of each resource in each country.

Unfortunately, the pattern shows that there are some countries which have access to no natural resources which are found in their countries, and there are other countries which have many natural resources that they can make the most of.

At some points, this unequal distribution can lead to conflict between countries.

I've got another check for you.

I've got a statement and I'd like you to decide whether you think this statement is true or false.

Everyone around the world has equal access to all natural resources.

Do you think this is true or false? Well done, that's false.

I've got two statements to help you justify your answer.

Do you agree that everyone around the world does not have equal access to natural resources? Is this because, A, natural resources are not all distributed equally around the world? Or B, natural resources are not all needed by everyone around the world? Well done, it's A.

Natural resources are not all distributed equally around the world.

We've got our second task for today.

I would like you to choose a natural resource, and brainstorm all of the ways it's useful to human life.

We had a look at oil and aluminium together.

I wonder which natural resource you may think of for yourself.

Once you've done that, I would also like you to choose which you think are the three most important natural resources.

Justify your choices with a sentence or two.

You can choose any three natural resources that you want, but you have to try and think which are the most important to human life.

You might have chosen plants to show all the different uses that it can provide to humans.

You might have mentioned that plants are great as a source of food, we eat them.

They're also brilliant as we can use them to make medicines, they provide shelter for animals, and they can be used in clothing such as cotton.

Well done if you also used plants.

When I was thinking about what I thought were the three most important natural resources, I chose water because without water we can't survive.

We need it to drink, to wash, for cooking, and in agriculture for farming.

I also chose plants because plants provide us with food, so they're essential to humans.

They also help us with important medicines and materials to make clothes.

The final natural resource I chose was sunlight.

It's a source of energy so it can power things, and it also provides us with warmth, and allows us to grow crops for food.

They were my choices.

I'm sure you had three choices with great justification as well.

Thank you so much for learning about natural resources with me today.

We learned that natural resources are materials produced by the environment that humans can make use of, such as energy resources, minerals, metals, food, and water.

We learned that some natural resources are renewable, they will not be used up and they can't run out, and some are not.

We also learned that some resources like food and water are essential to life.

We cannot live without them.

And finally, we learned that resource distribution is unequal around the world.

You did great learning today, and I hope to see you again soon in another geography lesson.