The Amazon Rainforest

Overview

Children will consolidate their knowledge of using maps and globes to locate the Amazon River, Basin and the Amazon Rainforest (the largest area of the rainforest in the world) as well as using maps to explain how the Amazon River and its tributaries drain into the Amazon Basin (the area around the Amazon River). They will have the chance to sketch the journey of the Amazon River on a blank map of South America using maps and globes and name some countries which run through it. Children will learn that the Amazon Rainforest has a tropical climate as it is located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator runs through it.

Children will be able to explain how the people who inhabit the area around the Amazon Basin use the land as well as being able to write about what deforestation is and the effect that it is having/can have on the Amazon Rainforest. They will also look at the layers within the rainforest and know that different animals live in different layers of the rainforest.

Key Vocab:

• Amazon Rainforest
• rainforest
• Amazon
• South America
• Peru
• Amazon River
• Amazon Basin
• Tropic of Cancer
• Tropic of Capricorn
• Equator
• climate
• tropical climate
• emergent
• canopy
• understory
• forest floor
• deforestation
• tributaries

Useful Links:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zx882hv/articles/zxdsvcw

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kznts