Tropical Rainforests Introduction and Layers Lesson

This is a lesson aimed at Key Stage 3 which introduces conditions in the tropical rainforest and covers the main vegetation layers. Everything you need is included to go ahead and teach it ‘off the peg’.

The lesson starts with a rainforest picture and rainforest sounds - you could close your blinds and turn the lights off to make it a bit more like the forest floor! Students get straight into a short piece of creative writing describing what they can see, hear, smell etc - there is a structure sheet to help them if needed and you might want to come up with a few sentences of your own to get them started.

A few students could feed back and read theirs out.

Then there is a slide comparing rainforest conditions with conditions in the classroom - ideally you need an environment meter for this so you can measure temp and humidity in the room.

After that, layers. There are three differentiated tasks - two wordfill sheets (one harder than the other) and a more open notes sheet for your highest ability. This higher ability task requires a resource sheet - I used a double page from Waugh’s ‘Integrated Approach’ textbook, of which I have included a picture.