This video shows how climate change is affecting the Adélie penguin population in Antarctica.
Students will learn that krill, which the Adélie penguins rely on for food, have lost a large portion of their habitat due to a lack of sea ice.
Teaching Tips
Positives
A full transcript is provided below the video.
Students will enjoy watching the footage of the penguins.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have a basic understanding of global warming and climate change.
Differentiation
Elementary science classes could use this video in a lesson on habitats, ecosystems, or food webs.
Biology classes could look up current data on the Adélie penguin population to learn how climate change is continuing to affect the polar ecosystems in Antarctica.
The Antarctic is one of the fastest warming regions on the planet. As a result, some penguin species are not adapting to the warming conditions as well as others. This video resource explains how Adèlie Penguins are at risk.
Standards
Science and Engineering
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
MS-LS2-1 Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
MS-LS2-4 Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.
HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
HS-LS4-4 Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations.
HS-LS4-5 Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.
