Extreme Geography: video worksheets, differentiated,

I use this as a standalone lesson to hook students into the physical geography topics, but it also works well as an engaging emergency cover-lesson. The film showcases some of the earth’s more spectacular phenomena: a lava-lake reveals the power of magma to move continents; diving in cenote caves; permafrost and the problem of methane release upon melting; meteorites – what they mean, and where to find them, and how the atmosphere protects us; Greenland’s melting ice-sheets; enormous evaporite salt deposits in Sicily; Australian stromatolites; Green Lake’s hydrogen sulphide layer; beneath the glacier at Svalbard; low oxygen tension at high altitudes in Peru. The film includes several women scientists, so is a good source of role-models for girls considering STEM subjects.

Find the film by searching YouTube’s BBC Earth Science channel for “The Incredible Power of Planet Earth | Compilation | BBC Earth Science”.

16 questions for the 36-min film. Differentiated! Both versions look very similar, but “B” version has subtle clues. Good subtitles, typed in by a human, not auto-generated nonsense. Answer sheet. Very easy to mark. .doc and .pdf of all sheets, link to film on all sheets.