3. Taiga Deforestation Culprits Edexcel B 8.4 a & b

This lesson covers Edexcel B points 8.4 a&b. I first imagined it like a murder mystery party where the students have to decide which factor is responsible for deforestation. However each 'culprit' has a big role to play in this so the activities changed, but still under that kind of light. First they have to label an empty nutrient cycle digram, recapping lesson 2. Then they read the culprit cards and write a more or more statement playing off the roles of each culprit to deforestation. After this they have to organise the culprits in to a diamond 9, then lastly they have to put their opinion on the opinion line and annotate it. This was a really good lesson for debate as I kept the human and physical factors in one lesson rather than separating them out. You could do some flip learning by giving out the culprit cards before the lesson so they are ready for the activities in class. I think I also used flip learning for this one using verso app I uploaded some videos on each culprit so they had an idea about the impacts already. The photos of pine cones were because I took in pine cones to demonstrate the adaptation of closed and open cones related to forest fires releasing seeds from the closed cones. This was good because the students had never seen pine cones before and called them acorns, a good little learning point.