Antarctica - a lesson plan

I just did a class on this topic for a co-op we are in and thought I would share my lesson plan and some of the resources I gathered. Antarctica seems an appropriate topic when it is getting chilly outside, and it's a really interesting and exciting topic too!

This lesson was aimed at third graders and assorted smaller siblings and lasted about an hour in a group discussion format. I decided to break down the information into four topics: geography and weather, animal and plant life, Antarctic exploration, and current research.

I. Geography
  a. Where is it on the globe? Temperatures, day and night cycles, summer and winter, desert-like conditions. It is the 5th largest continent and as big as the U.S. and Mexico combined.
  b. Some major features. Transantarctic Mountains, Ross, and Ronne ice shelves, Antarctic Peninsula, geographic and magnetic south poles. The land is mostly below sea level, and yet the ice is high enough that it is the highest continent on Earth. Glaciers, icebergs, seasonal sea ice, winds, aurora australis. Fun facts.
  c. Ocean currents

II. Antarctic Life
  a. mostly ocean based - upwelling causes an extremely productive ecosystem (4 times more than any other ocean), the food web (phytoplankton, zooplankton and krill, birds, fish, seals, whales)
  b. very little land life- a couple of plants: moss, lichen and one kind of grass, one flightless midge
  c. types of birds - shearwaters, petrels, skuas, albatross, fulmars, prions, storm petrels, cormorants, gulls, terns
  d. types of penguins - Adele, African, Chinstrap, Emperor, Erect-crested, Fiordland, Gentoo, Humbolt, King, Macaroni, Rockhopper, Royal, Yellow-eyed
  c. types of seals - Weddell, Fur, Crabeater, Leopard, Elephant
 d. types of whales -  Southern right, see, minke, blue, humpback, sperm, killer, hourglass dolphin, four tooth whale, right whale dolphin, southern bottle nose whale

III. Antarctic Exploration
  a. 1772-1775. British Captain James Cook spent three years trying to reach the continent, but was unable to get past the ice.
  b. 1820's. People began hunting fur seals on nearby islands for oil and fur. When they were almost wiped out by the 1830'2, they switched to whales.
  c. 1841. British Captain James Clark Ross discovered Mount Erebus and the Ross ice shelf . The ice on the shelf can be 1,000 feet thick, and 600 miles long.
  d. 1895. First man to step foot on Antarctica was whaler Henryk Bull on Cape Adare.
  e. 1911. The Race to the Pole! Two expeditions went out to try to reach the south pole. Norwegian Roald Amundsen left on October 19 with four men and 52 dogs. They reached the South Pole on December 14, planted a flag, spent a couple of days making sure it was the right spot, and headed back to the coast. They made it back on January 25, 1912 with all men and 11 dogs. British man Robert Scott set out on November 2 with four men, sled dogs and ponies. Unfortunately, the men were unexperienced with sled dogs and couldn't control them, the ponies died, and they ended up pulling the sleds themselves. They did reach the South Pole, exhausted, on January 18 only to find the Norwegian flag already there. They headed back, but none of them made it.
  f. 1914- 1916. Sir Earnest Shackleton and his voyage on the Endurance. Wanted to be the first to cross the Antarctic on foot. They were well prepared, but things went wrong. They got caught in the pack ice in the Weddell Sea. When their boat was eventually crushed by the ice, they set off with everything they could carry across the ice until they reached open water. They made it through rough seas and reached an isolated island where they made camp and weathered the worst of the winter storms. Knowing they were not going to be rescued and starving, six of them, including Shackleton, set out in one of the boats with a jerry-rigged sail to try to reach an island where they knew there was a whaling camp. Two weeks of fighting some of the roughest seas in the world and they made it! Only, they were on the wrong side of the island. Starving, frostbitten and in rags, they hiked 26 miles across mountains to reach the settlement. Amazingly, they were able to rescue their shipmates two months later and all were returned alive after two entire years lost. Not a man died.

IV. Government and Research
  a. the Antarctic Treaty - Signed in 1959, 12 nations agreed to designate Antarctica a research preserve. It is owned by no one nation and mining, oil exploration, and military activity are all banned.
  b. research stations - 30 countries currently operate research stations on the continent. The United States has three: McMurdo Station, the Admunsen-Scott South Pole Station, and the Palmer Station on the Peninsula. The McMurdo station is the largest, with as many as 1,000 people there in the summer.
  c. current research - touch on each of these
    1. climate
    2. fossils and paleohistory
    3. meteorites
    4. astronomy
    5. study of ocean life - antifreeze
  d. What would you bring to the Antarctic? Break up into groups and make a list of things you might bring with you if you were to spend 6 weeks at Palmer Station. You can only bring two bags (max. 70 pounds) and a carry-on. When they have their lists, come back together and talk about it.

Resources and materials (some used for this lesson and some just great sources!):

a globe
a good map (I used a National Geographic map of the Antarctic I had as well as passed out a copy I found on the internet)
March of the Penguins (movie)
March of the Penguins (book summary)
Here is Antarctica (Web of Life) by Medeleine Dunphy and Tom Leonard
Antarctica (book) by Helen Cowcher
TED talk by Paul Nicklen: Tales of Ice-bound Wonderlands. National Geographic photographer shows his photos and shares his stories. The end of this talk he shares his experience of getting into the water with an enormous leopard seal. This part of the talk starts at about 13:16.
TED talk by Ray Zahab: Ray Zahab treks to the South Pole
for more mature readers: Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing and
South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance by Earnest Shackleton
shorter accounts for kids:
Spirit of Endurance: The True Story of the Shackleton Expedition to the Antarctic (This is a tall book with some great illustrations and maps.)
Trial by Ice: A Photobiography of Sir Ernest Shackleton

...and a small sprinkling of websites:
Discovering Antarctica: http://www.discoveringantarctica.org.uk/
Cool Antarctica: http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/antarctica%20fact%20file%20index.htm
New Zealand Antarctic http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/
NOAA's Antarctica Page: http://www.oar.noaa.gov/education/antarctica.html
Antarctic Lesson Plans http://www.units.muohio.edu/cryolab/education/AntarcticLessons.htm