Lesson video

- Our lesson question today is what impact are humans likely to have on life in the future? As well as lined paper, it might also be a good idea today to have a piece of plain paper for later on in the lesson, we're going to be making something and we're gonna need plain paper and scissors, but if you only have lined paper, that's fine, we will make do with what you've got.

You are also going to need in this lesson, your star words, the words we're going to need today are extinction impact, domesticated and conservationist.

Let's practise saying that one, I'm gonna say it then you're gonna say it, conservationist conservationist, great, we're gonna learn what that means later on in the lesson.

Extinction, we've learned about before extinction is when an entire species no longer lives.

So when all of the members of a species have died, we say they are extinct, and we learned about extinction when we looked at dinosaurs a couple of lessons ago.

Impact, we also looked at last lesson impact means the effect that something has and we're gonna look at the effect that humans are having today.

In this lesson, we're gonna start with a quick recap, then we're going to learn about the story of the dodo.

We're going to look at some of the impacts that humans are having, then we're going to look at conservation, which is something that I'm very excited about and then we are going to make a zine.

If you don't know what a zine is, that's okay I will tell you when we get to that part of the lesson.

So let's begin with our recap.

There are two pictures on the slide.

We've looked at these pictures in almost every lesson, so straight away, I want you to pause the video and see if you can write down what these pictures represent.

They are some of our key words from this topic, pause the video and write down what these words represent or any facts you can remember about them.

So for example, you could write down finches beak for the first picture, pause the video and complete the task now.

Great, so there were lots of things you could have written for those pictures, we've done lots of learnings so far.

The first picture represents evolution which is the gradual change in organisms over time, so well done if you wrote that down.

You might also have written things about the finches 'cause those were the examples, that was the example we used when we learned about evolution.

So you might have written about the finches beaks changing or the types of food they could eat.

The second picture is the fossil record, and that's what gives us evidence for evolution.

And you can see on the picture and you might have added these labels in that the age of the rock shows us the age of the fossils.

So if the fossils in the newer rock at the top, then we know it's a newer fossil.

There are lots of other facts you might have written down from our lessons, so well done for having a go at that.

Now I am going to tell you the story of the dodo.

This is what a dodo bird looks like, you can see it's a drawing of a dodo bird.

They would have been about three foot tall, so quite big, definitely bigger than a chicken.

What's three foot? Maybe about half my height, which probably isn't very helpful if you don't know how tall I am.

So guess that it's about half of the height of your parent or carer, so big, they were quite big birds.

And I'm going to tell you the story of what happened to the dodo.

I want you to listen carefully because at the end of this story, I'm gonna ask you to draw what happened.

So this is the story of the dodo bird.

They lived on a small island called Mauritius which is off the Coast of the continent Africa.

These dodo birds had a pretty happy life for a very long time because they had no natural predators.

That meant there was nothing on the island that ate dodo birds, that was until 1598 when the first human sailors arrived on the Island of Mauritius.

When they arrived, they spotted this bird and they decided to call it the dodo.

The reason they decided to call it a dodo is 'cause they thought this bird was really stupid.

This bird would wander up to the humans and it wasn't scared of them at all.

The dodo birds were fearless, but unfortunately, this meant that the sailors could catch them and hunt them really easily.

The sailors had been on that boat for a long time and they'd been eating mostly fish and food that was stored up in barrels.

So when they got to the island, they were really keen to get some fresh meat and they come to the boat, the dodos, it was so easy because the dodos had no natural predators, so they weren't scared of anything and they weren't scared of humans.

That's why humans thought they were quite stupid and they called them the dodo.

If you say dodo in a funny voice, it does sound a bit silly, doesn't it? dodo, dodo, have a go, dodo so that's why they called it the dodo bird.

Eventually more and more people started arriving to the island, and we say that they colonised it.

So when humans colonise something well, or any species colonises something, it means that they start to live there.

So these sailors were just visiting and they hunted a lot of dodos and they named them, but then eventually, new people came and they colonised the Island of Mauritius, they started to live there.

This was bad news for the dodos because not only did they keep hunting the dodos for food, they also brought other animals with them.

Things like cats and pigs and sheep, normal animals that have been domesticated, we learnt what that was last lesson, so that means kind of bred by humans, but animals like cats hunted the dodo as well and animals like goats and pigs used to trample all over their nests.

So because of this, dodos became extinct.

So many dodos were killed by humans that now they no longer exist on the Island of Mauritius or anywhere else in the world.

So unfortunately, the story of the dodo has quite a sad ending.

So now we are going to map the story of the dodo.

So that means we're going to draw what happened to help us remember it.

Now you might want to lay out your piece of paper like this.

So we're going to split our story into six parts, and we're going to draw six small, quick pictures to help us remember.

We don't have to spend ages on these pictures, if you really want to make, spend ages and make them look beautiful, that's fine, that's up to you, but the point is just to help them stick in our memory.

So I normally just draw some quick little sketches and add some labels.

If you want to, you can split your page into six boxes and draw a grid like the one that's on the screen, or you can just draw a picture and draw an arrow to the next picture and so on.

We're going to start with mapping the first part of the story, so I'm going to show you how I would have done this part.

So the first part of the story is that we learned that the island, sorry that the dodos live on the Island of Mauritius.

So in my first box, I've drawn squiggly outline of an island and I written the key word Mauritius in there, practise saying that with me, Mauritius, great.

Then the next stitch line I'm going to add is that there's no natural predators.

So I've written predators, and then I'm going to draw a cross over it.

And then underneath your picture, you might want to write a sentence just to explain what's happened.

So I would probably write, dodos lived on the Island of Mauritius, there were no natural predators.

You can pause the video and draw your first picture and sentence now.

Great, what's the next thing we're going to draw? So the, our dodos were living happily on the island what was the next thing that happened? Who arrived? Yes, that's right, the sailors arrived.

They arrived in 1598, when did they arrive? Great, so I might draw a picture of a sailor and then I might write 1598 so that I remember when they arrived.

Pause the video and draw your picture for this box of the story now, please.

Great, okay, what happened next? See if you can remember before I tell you.

Something that the sailors did, they did hunt them, but what did they do before they hunted them? They named them, so they called the bird, the bird, sorry they called the bird the dodo.

So you might want to draw maybe a sailor with a speech bubble that says dodo.

And why did they call the bird, the dodo, the dodo? It's 'cause they thought they were stupid when actually they were just fearless 'cause they have no predators.

So you might want to think of a way of drawing that, maybe a dodo with a big smile on it's face, maybe you could write the key word fearless or maybe you could add that detail in your sentence under the box.

Pause the video and complete that now for me.

Great, the next thing that happened.

So after the sailors named them, what did they start doing? That's right, they started hunting the dodos.

So that can be your next picture.

Then the sailors left, but who else came to the island? What happened next? People colonised the island, so they came to live on the island and they brought other animals with them.

So maybe you could draw the island again and this time you could draw lots of people on it.

You could just draw stick figures if you wanted to, or maybe you could draw a pig or a cat to show that they brought other animals with them, up to you so pause the video and complete that for me now.

And then how does our story end? The dodos become extinct.

So what could you draw for that? Maybe a picture of a dodo bird with a big cross thread.

Pause the video and draw your last picture for me now, please.

Okay, brilliant, so that's the story of the dodo.

That is an example of one of the effects that humans have had on other animals and life that live on this planet.

Unfortunately, that's not the only impact that humans are having on the planet.

So the dodo is one example of an animal that's gone extinct because of humans.

Unfortunately, humans are responsible for the extinction of lots of other species, of plants and animals and we're going to learn some of the reasons why humans cause extinctions.

So I'm gonna show you four pictures and all of these are a reason that humans cause extinctions.

I wonder if you can figure out what each picture represents.

I'm gonna show you them one at a time and you might want to write yourself some notes, write down what you think the picture is showing.

So here's the first one what impact is this showing? Here's the next one.

Here's the next one.

That one's a bit trickier, just have a guess I'll tell you in a second, and here's the last one.

Have a look closely at what's in the ocean or the water there.

So we're gonna look at each one of these impacts in more detail now, so let's see if you figured out correctly what they were.

The first one is deforestation, that's a fancy word for chopping down trees.

So humans cut down forests and they burn the wood to make fuel, they also use it to make building materials and make way, so clear the land for places to live.

This is called deforestation, what's it called? And it destroys habitats and habitats are the places where our organisms live.

There are some things we can do to reduce the amount of deforestation.

So one of the things we can do is we can try and reduce the amount of paper that we use because paper comes from trees and we can also make sure we recycle things like cardboard and paper, so that we don't have to cut down so many trees.

Another impact that humans have is hunting.

You might have written poaching, that's another word for it.

And this is when humans hunt and kill other animals for food sometimes for sport, sometimes for protection.

So if you lived in a country with a large predator, like a lion, then you might need to protect your farm animals, your sheep from the lion and so you might go out and kill the lion.

This is another way that humans can affect animals.

Some of the things we can do to reduce the effect of this is to try and eat less meat.

This one, this impact was representing global warming.

So you can see the pictures of our earth and it's getting too hot, that's why it's sweating and the sun's there.

Now, this is probably the biggest impact that humans have begun to have on our planet and it's the increase of the temperature throughout the world.

So it's getting hotter because of gases being released by fossil fuels, and overall, the temperature and the weather is changing over a long period of time and that makes it really hard for different animals and plants to survive because they're adapted to one temperature or a specific range of temperatures.

And if we change those temperatures too quickly, then they're going to find it harder to survive because they won't be as well adapted.

Some things we can do to try and slow this global warming happening are using less fuel.

So driving our cars less and not using as much electricity, so remembering to switch our lights off.

And the last impact we're going to look at today is pollution, so the picture here is of lots of plastic and rubbish in the ocean.

So human waste, all those things that we don't need any more that we throw away is spreading across the planet and it's affecting the lives of other creatures.

Humans have created plastics which don't break down.

And so they, so they stay solid and they've spread particularly to the sea and they've caused lots of damage for sea creatures who get sick by accidentally eating those plastics or getting caught in the plastics.

So a big thing we can do to reduce pollution, particularly plastic pollution is to reduce the amount of plastic we're using.

Instead of buying a plastic bottle every time we go to the corner shop or the shop, we could get a reusable one and just trying our best to always recycle and not use so much plastic.

So we've looked there at four different impacts that humans are having, and we've also talked about some of the ways we can try as an individual to reduce them.

And that's important because humans are causing so many extinctions that actually some scientists have said that we might be the cause of the next mass extinction.

So you might remember from our geological era lesson, we learned that extinction is when one of a species is when, sorry, when none of the species is alive any longer but a mass extinction is when lots and lots of different species die out all at the same time, which is what happened with the dinosaurs.

And we think that what happened with the dinosaurs is that an asteroid hit the earth and caused the extinction of lots of species all at once, but some scientists are saying that humans are causing more extinctions than a huge asteroid that killed out all the dinosaurs.

So we learnt that we have different ecological eras and we're currently in the Cenozoic era, but some scientists believe that because of humans, species are becoming extinct now 1,000 times faster than before humans were on the earth, how many times faster? 1,000 times faster.

And so they're saying that we're the cause of the next mass extinction event.

And we've now entered a new geological period of time, which is called the Anthro.

I'm gonna try to say that, Anthropocene, I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna practise Anthropocene, Anthropocene, your turn.

The prefix of that word, anthro means human.

So the new period of time is actually named after us because we're causing so many of the extinctions.

I have some questions for you on that learning that we've just done.

So could you answer these questions on your piece of paper, please.

List some of the reasons that humans are causing extinctions see how many you can remember.

How much faster do some scientists think species are going extinct due to the impact of humans? So how many times faster? And then write a sentence to describe how a human impact is causing extinction, so you can just choose one.

So your sentence then that you could use is one impact humans are having is.

this is causing extinctions because.

pause the video and have a go at answering these questions for me now, please.

Great, let's go through the answers.

So for an impact, you could have written global warming, deforestation, hunting, or pollution.

Well done if you got some of those, give yourself a tick.

The answer to number two is 1,000 times faster and number three, we'll talk about because you might have written different answers.

So if you wrote global warming, you might have written an answer like one impact humans are having is global warming.

This is causing extinctions because the temperature is rising around the world and this means that organisms can no longer survive.

Or you might have written, one impact humans are having is deforestation.

This is causing extinctions because cutting down trees is destroying organisms habitat.

Or you might've written, one impact humans are having is hunting, this is causing extinctions because humans are killing animals for food and for sport.

Or another answer that you could have written is one impact humans are having is pollution.

This is causing extinctions because animals in the sea are eating plastic or getting caught in plastic and dying.

There are lots of answers you could have written for that, so give yourself a tick if you wrote something that we learned about today.

Now, learning about the impact that humans are having can be quite sad because we are having a big impact and it is mostly negative, so we are causing lots of animals and plants to die, however, there are things that we can do.

We've spoken about some of those individual things that we can do, so we could use less electricity, we could drive less, we could recycle more, we could use less plastic, we could use less paper we could use less meat.

I want you now to take a minute and just think what's one thing that you could do to try and help our planet and the organisms that live on it? We just spoke about six things.

So I want you to pause the video and write down the one thing that you are going to try and do.

I'm going to try to.

to save our planet, pause the video and do that for me now, please.

Amazing, well done.

I'm going to teach you how to make a zine.

Now, a zine is like a little mini magazine that is meant to educate other people about a topic.

So you now know lots about evolution because we've had six lessons now on evolution and how the animals and plants on our planet change.

So you have two choices, you can either make the zine about the conservation organisation that you're researching.

So the Jane Goodall Institute, the WWF or the RhinoOne, or you could challenge yourself and you could make a zine that includes your learning from this whole topic.

So if you've got your notes from our other lessons, then you can go back and you can use them to make a zine on this whole topic and then you can give it to maybe one of your family members or save it and share it to your friends when you go back to school.

I'm gonna show you now how to make a zine.

The only thing that you're going to need, or the only things are a piece of a A4 paper and scissors to make your actual zine, you don't need scissors this big, these are just the only ones I have.

Please check with your parent or carer before you use scissors and check that they're happy for you to do that, they might want to supervise you.

And then when we actually write in our zine, we're going to need some pens or pencils.

You might want to use different colours, up to you.

So this is one I made earlier, I haven't written in it, but this is what it's gonna look like when we finish, it's going to be a little, a little like book or magazine that's going to have six pages.

So you can see I've numbered them one, two, three, four, five, six.

So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how to make this little booklet.

So you start off with your A4 piece of paper.

It can be plain, it can be coloured it can be lined, it doesn't really matter.

And you're going to fold it in half like phrase like this.

I would suggest doing this on a flat surface so that you can fold it exactly in half and then press down the fold like this, so you have a really crisp fold, then you can open it back up again.

And now you need to fold it in half the other way.

So again, I'm going to do that on a surface and I'm going to press down on the edge so it's a crisp fold This time don't unfold it, I want you to fold it in half, like phrase again like this.

If at any point you want to pause the video so that you can do it along with me, go for it we're gonna go through step-by-step.

And again, each time pressing down on your flat surface like this so you have a really crisp fold.

Okay, unfortunately, oh no, it's fine.

The surface I'm using is not that clean, so I got a little mark on it, but it's okay, Then you can, so you should have it like this, then you can open it back up and now we're gonna use our scissors to make a cut.

So I have my paper folded in half like this and the side where it's folded is facing upwards.

So the fold should be facing upwards.

You're going to take your scissors and you're going to cut in the middle from this top fold to this middle fold.

And in fact, I'm going to draw with my pen to show you exactly where it will be.

You don't need to draw this line because messy, but I'm just gonna do it so you can see exactly what I mean.

So I'm gonna cut that down the middle from the fold to the second fold here, and then you stop there.

I see your piece of paper should look like this, pause the video and get to this step, please.

Great, now the next thing that we need to do is we can open up our piece of paper and we should now have a hole in the middle that looks a little bit like a mouth.

One of your folds is going this way and that's fine, it can stay like that, but one of them, we now need to fold the other way.

So I'm actually gonna stick my fingers through like this, I'm gonna pull it back and then I'll show you what I'm doing at the back.

I'm now crisping the folds like this so it goes the other way.

So you should now have a piece of paper that looks like this so you have a hole in the middle.

Pause the video and get to this stage.

If you'll need to see the step one more time then just go backwards.

When you're here, I then want you to pull both your sides like this.

So grab, grab the corner going this way and grab the corner going this way and then just gently pull it like this and fold your piece of paper like that.

If you need to pause the video and check that step again, go ahead and do that, great.

Then you can take your piece of paper and you could fold it in half like this and then fold it in half like this.

And you should now have a little book, has a page, a front cover, a back cover and a page in the middle.

There you go.

Once you have got to this stage, you can then decide, are you going to make your zine or your zine about, so you've got two options, so either you're going to make it all about your conservation organisation that you've researched, in which case your front cover should have a nice, clear title that says The World Wildlife Foundation or The Jane Goodall Institute, or are you going to make your zine about the whole topic that we've covered so far? In which case you might want to name it something like The Theory of Evolution or How Organisms or Animals Change Over Time because that's what we've been studying in the last six lessons, it's up to you.

You can keep your book folded up like this and do your first page, turn it, do the next page and so on or it might be helpful to write your numbers so you know which page is which, and then unfold it.

And then you need some, then you can do your drawings and your writings when it's flat like this and then fold it back up at the end.

You might then need to watch the video again to see how you fold up, is up to you.