Middle School Science Lesson Plan: Geography, Climate, and Adaptation

Imagination and creativity are important when creating science lesson plans, and students will learn through creative and critical thinking when presented with this lesson plan. Geography, climate, and adaptation can all be taught through this middle school science lesson plan.

For this lesson plan it is important to break the science class into groups. There are also some materials that are needed to complete this science lesson plan with middle school age children. The materials you will need are oak tag, pencils, colored pencils, and pens.

Start by instructing groups that they must create a map, and they must use their imagination to develop a country. The middle school students must work together to map out the geography and climate of their country. After they have worked on this project for about half an hour ask students to compare their map to a map of the united states and talk about animal life and plant life.

Then have the middle school students design a list of three plants and animals from their country; then have the groups also list characteristics for each animal and explain why these characteristics are appropriate. Also require that the students name all of the creations and explain where each animal and plant resides. Help students focus on the connection between geography, climate, and wildlife.

When the country and its inhabitants are all complete, have the each group present their creation to the entire class. Then have the entire class compare the new countries to the United States geography and climate, and this lesson plan will help students see the connection between geography, climate, and wildlife adaptation and its similarities or differences to the United States.

This lesson plan should take about a week, and the require materials are inexpensive and easy to find. Some research materials for this lesson plan are wildlife magazines, botanical and gardening guides, and historical wildlife books.

This lesson can be alter can include researching geography, climate, and wildlife of several different contents. This will allow students to learn about many different areas of land, many types of plants, and many different animals. If requiring different groups to emulate different continents allow students more time to discuss and compare continents.

The food chain can also be added to this project by requiring students explain how the animals, plants, and geography work together. Teachers should inspire students to question climate change and its relation to animal and plant life adaptation as well. Students can be asked to take one animal and plant out of its natural climate and place it in a different geographical area. This will require middle school children to consider adaptation on a more extreme level.This middle school lesson plan will require children to use their critical and creative thinking skills to understand geography, climate, and wildlife adaptation.