Antarctic Worksheets from Fiona

Create a Diorama

 Years 7 - 9

Each person in the class has to make a diorama out of a shoe box or something similar. This is a collection of between five and ten objects saved by a member of an expedition to Antarctica. These objects may be symbolic (for example a match to represent the warmth this expedition member felt  able to impart to other members of the team) or practical (perhaps the knife that they used to carve meat from seal bones) or have sentimental value (maybe the collar of a favourite dog who had to be shot).

In preparation for this, the class may read some of the following:

Fuchs and Hillary        The Crossing of Antarctica, London 1959

Marshall, Howard       With Scott to the Pole, London  1960

May, John                    The Greenpeace Book of Antarctica, London ,1988

Lansing, Alfred           Endurance, the Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told, London 1999

Lewis, David              Ice Bird - Capsize in the Antarctic Ocean

Thomson, John            Shackleton's Captain,  Christchurch, 1998

Each person may wish to write a short explanation of the significance of each object in their collection. The explanation will be included with the diorama.

Drama

Write Your Own Antarctic Drama Years 9 - 11

The Situation:

You are a group of four, five or six researchers  working in a small hut at Cape Royds, two days' trek over ice and snow from Scott Base. You have been drilling holes through the ice to catch and tag fish for your research assignment for a New Zealand University. However, your work has had to be temporarily halted as a blizzard has blown up and you all have to shelter in the hut.

Scenario #1:

As you sit together, trying unsuccessfully to get the gas stove to light, discussing your research and trying to keep your minds occupied, you are astonished to hear a weak banging at the door as a person outside feebly tries to open it against the raging gales. When you open the door, a man falls inward, and you hear his story: he and three others set out from their ship which was crushed by ice a week ago.

Scenario #2

During the conversation, a member of the research team reveals a sensational secret about himself/herself. The others realise that this secret means that they can no longer continue their research together in the hut. However, the blizzard is raging on and it is obviously not going to end quickly.

Group Task:

Choose one of the scenarios and complete the story in a play. Each group must write a two- or three-act script for the play, learn their lines, and act it out for the class.

Antarctic Tent Debate

For this exercise, the class may be divided into groups of about six, in which case one or two people in each group lose and have to 'walk'. Otherwise, the class may do it as a whole, in which case, perhaps the best dozen are selected as the winners.

During Captain Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, Captain Oates knew that his illness was holding up the rest of the team. Rather than burden the others with his weak and sick body, he chose to leave the tent and walk off to his certain death in the storm. His famous parting words were "I am going out; I may be some time".

However, being modern young people in the same situation as Captain Scott's expedition, you are not about to sacrifice yourself for others, even though you know that the group will only survive if one person walks out of the storm-bound tent. Your aim is to ensure that your own life will be preserved.

In order to work out who gets to live and who has to walk, you have a debate where each person gets two or three minutes to talk. You must create for yourself a persona you think is worth saving (perhaps you have some special skills or attributes, or you have done a great service to humankind, or you have compelling reasons that you are needed at home), then convince the rest of the team. The others have to want you to be a survivor for the reasons you give when it is your turn to debate.

When everyone has spoken, the team votes for the people they want to remain. No-one may vote for themselves.

The winners are those who have convinced the rest of the team members that they must be saved.

Soundscapes

This is a kind of play, based only on sounds. You are going to create a soundscape of Antarctica. The result should be a symphony of sounds produced by the voices of the participants imitating what you believe may be the sounds of Antarctica or part of Antarctica.

Divide the class into approximately half. You may use larger or smaller groups, and experiment with the different results from different sizes.

Each participant must create a sound that he or she associates with Antarctica. You may give a few suggestions such as the noises of whales communicating with each other, the calls of penguins, the cry of the wind, the creak of the icebergs, voices of men urging on the dogs, the moan of gulls, the crashing of chunks of ice colliding in the storm-tossed waters etc.

Each group must then work out a combination of sounds, rather like a symphony, with some sounds being used at some times, and some at others, and possibly all at once for a crescendo.

Each production should last 2 - 3 minutes for groups of about ten, and longer for bigger groups.

Antarctica Website Comprehension Exercise

Read the Antarctic Webpage at  http://www.antarctica.org.nz/  before you begin this comprehension exercise.

1)     Antarctica could be described as:

i)      The coldest continent on earth

ii)    The driest continent on earth

iii)  The highest continent on earth

iv)   All of the above

2)     Which Antarctic sea is closest to New Zealand?

i)      The Pacific Ocean

ii)    The Ross Sea

iii)  The Southern Ocean

iv)   The Indian Ocean

3.      What did the ancient Greeks call the Southern continent?

4.      What does Terra Australis Incognita mean?

5.      Who sighted the Antarctic continent for the first time?

6.      Between which years did the first British Antarctic expedition take place?

7.      When did Roald Amundsen first spend a winter in Antarctica?

8.      What did he later become famous for?

9.      What was the name of Robert Falcon Scott’s ship?

10.   Name the three men in the party that reached 82 deg 17 sec south on 30^th December 1903.

11.   Who led the second party to reach the South Pole (and died on the return journey)?

12.   When was the Ross Dependency established by New Zealand?

13.   When was New Zealand’s Scott Base established?

14.   The rocks in Antarctica are similar to rocks in:

i)      Australia

ii)    India

iii)  Africa and South America

iv)   All of the above

15.   Why do salts accumulate (gather) in soils?

16.   What are some life forms that can live where moisture exists on Antarctica?

17.   How long ago did New Zealand and Australia split from Antarctica?

18.   What is the chemical difference between normal oxygen and ozone?

19.   What important role does the ozone layer play?

20.   Which gases made a huge impact on the destruction of the ozone layer?

21.   What kind of radiation reaches earth as a result of the depletion of ozone?

22.   What does this radiation cause?


 

Design Your Own Antarctica Web Page

You are designing a web page that convinces people that Antarctica is a very special place on Earth that should be turned into a World Heritage Park. Include some pictures, some information and some persuasive arguments.

However, to begin with, you will need to read about how to go about making a web page that is effective:

Elements of a Homepage

Find a couple of homepages on the Internet (preferably those you know and like) and look carefully at the following features to see what looks good and is speedy to download:

·       Page Title

·       Top-of-page graphics

·       Page backgrounds

·       Headline text

·       Body Text

·       Menu Bars

·       Links

·       URL address/author information

Planning

Think about:

• Who is your target audience?
• What is the goal of this space?
• What should the overall tone or theme be?
• Be consistent throughout your Antarctica web page.

Content

You need to be informative and convincing. Give people plenty of information about Antarctica. Remember that most people will never visit it themselves, so take them on a little tour. Introduce them to the weird and wonderful world of the penguins, the seals, the explorers, the strange ice floes, the cruel blizzards, the craggy icebergs, the high, dry deserts, the unusual plant life, the importance of the krill. Make them LOVE Antarctica!

You may need to explain the interdependence of Antarctic organisms in order to persuade them that Antarctica is worth conserving.

Then you need to prod them into action. Use imperatives to tell them to write to the appropriate people. Who are these people? Give them names and addresses. Give  them some clues about what to write.

Organisation and Style

Organisation of information is an important aspect of the effectiveness of any web page.  So remember:

• When a user views a page, they can view only one page at a time.
• A good model of an Internet site contains information broken into bite-sized pieces and linked by menus and submenus.
• You may wish to link your site to other web sites about Antarctica.
• Elements within the page could also be linked.
• To plan how a site will look, draw a flow chart of the data structure.  You should also draw a plan of how the pages will look visually. 
• Don't overload the page with graphics, as it will be slow to download.

Page Length

• Don't put too much information on one page.
• Use larger type than you would for hard copy.

Graphics

When creating a site, good graphic elements are essential. The graphics needed include illustrations, logos, icons and menu bars, lines and bullet points.

Three ways to obtain images are:

• create your own
• use photographs or other images you can scan in
• use Clipart or copyright-free Internet sites to find illustrations.

Copyright

Copyright is the right to reproduce (copy) an artwork, piece of writing, song lyrics and music, design or other copyright material. 

The traps for the unwary include:

• Downloading images from on-line services and reproducing them
• Copying images, sounds and animations from the Internet

Making Antarctic Poems

Poetry is language in its most concentrated form. It expresses powerful emotions or passions; it may convey the quintessence of an experience or description. Its sounds should satisfy the ear and its vividness create pictures in the mind.

Haiku

A three-lined Japanese poem of 17 syllables, usually presenting an image or delicate emotion.