Hot desert adaptations
Name
Adaptations
Joshua tree
Camel
Addax
Cactus
Animal or Plant species
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Hot desert adaptations
Teaching Notes: How have plants and animals adapted to live in hot deserts?
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All students should know some features that allow plants and animals to survive in the desert.
Most should be able to explain how these adaptations help in a hot desert climate.
Some students should be able to understand why there is a threat to biodiversity in the Sahara
desert.
Starter:
Odd one out activity.
Students should reflect on their previous knowledge of hot deserts and use an atlas to help identify
the odd one out in each list of four words. Students should be prompted/questioned by the teacher
to explain their reasoning to develop the understanding of the rest of the class. For an extra
challenge, any students who complete this easily could be asked to create their own ‘odd one out’
groupings.
Answers:
List
List
List
List
1: Amazon - is a river or tropical rainforest, the rest are names of hot deserts.
2: Soil - is the only abiotic (non-living) component of an ecosystem.
3: Bear – is the only animal that does not live in a hot desert.
4: Kenya - the other countries make up part of the Sahara desert.
Main Task:
Peer teach activity.
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Students split into small groups of four to research the desert adaptations of a plant or animal
species. Each person in the group has a role to ensure the task is completed and no one sits idle.
Teacher may wish to give out sticky labels or assign a team leader in each group to ensure that
each student carries out their group role effectively.
It would be useful to put a copy of the PowerPoint on your student shared access area, so that
groups can easily access the web links for their animal/plant.
Whilst the groups are working on their presentations the teacher should circulate round and
prompt students to write down detailed annotations on their diagram.
Whilst each group is delivering their presentation other students should take notes on the
adaptations of the different plants/animals.
You could get students to complete a peer assessment activity to rate how well each group
explains the adaptations. This could be done via a RAG (red, amber, green) system, WWW & EBI
(what went well, even better if) or a score out of 10 on a show-me board.
If groups complete their labelled diagram poster early they could create a word chain (see
example on slide). This prompts higher order thinking, is good for the more able and also is a
good literacy exercise.
Plenary:
5,4,3,2,1 activity.
It would be useful to have the group posters displayed for this task, or allow students to circulate
around the room to read the posters again. Students have to write down words, phrases, or short
sentences linked to their understanding against the initial learning objectives. Ask students to share
their responses for this task with the rest of the class.
© www.teachitgeography.co.uk 2017
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