NEW AQA GCSE (2016) Chemistry - Atmospheric Pollutants

This lesson is designed for the NEW AQA Trilogy Chemistry GCSE, particularly the 'Earth’s Atmosphere’ SoW.

For more lessons designed to meet specification points for the NEW AQA Trilogy specifications for Biology, Chemistry and Physics please see my shop: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/SWiftScience

The first part of the lesson asks students to think > pair > share some of their answers to questions about pollution - where does it come from? How may we monitor it? Once pupils have gathered together their ideas as groups, a class discussion can highlight some of the important ideas & the next slide details the answers.

The next task focuses on sulfur dioxide pollution and it’s contribution to the formation of acid rain. Pupils will be given some information in pairs about this pollutant and will be required to answer questions about this information in their books. Once completed pupils are able to self-assess their work using the answers provided in the PowerPoint.

Pupils will now watch a video on complete vs. incomplete combustion to think about the gases released into the atmosphere via these two processes. They will need to answer a set of questions whilst watching this video, they can then self-assess their work using the answers provided. Two further atmospheric pollutants are now introduced to the class - nitrogen oxides and also solid particulates released by diesel engines.

Pupils will now complete a fill-in-the-blank task to summarise what they have learned to far this lesson, this task can then be self-assessed using the answers provided. This is followed by a quick check ‘True or False’ activity, pupils will need to identify whether a list of statements are true or false.

The next part of the lesson focuses on how scientists can monitor pollution, pupils are given a set of results from particle collector pads which have been left in certain locations around the UK. Pupils need to record their results in a table, draw a graph to represent the results and write a conclusion about their results.

The plenary task is for pupils to either summarise what they have learned today in three sentences or write a definition of a list of key words from today’s lesson.

All resources are included at the end of the presentation. Thanks for looking, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section and any feedback would be appreciated :)