Our task on this assignment was to present an intercultural topic to our colleagues. After some deliberations,
we decided to introduce Antarctica. Although Antarctica itself doesn’t have a native human population, it
is a unique continent, that seven nations claim different parts of; New Zealand, Australia, France, Norway,
the United Kingdom, Chile, and Argentina. Antarctica is the only continent with no permanent human
habitation. There are, however, permanent human settlements, where scientists and support staff live for
part of the year on a rotating basis. But aside from its rich and interesting demographic population,
Antarctica is also important interculturally, due to its role in climate change. Antarctica has the largest
single piece of ice on Earth. The effect of global warming would result in the ice melting, which would
raise global sea levels, and cause flooding and catastrophe around the world. The ocean surrounding the
continent also support masses of the world’s sealife – including 15 species of whale and dolphin, and five
species of penguin. The nutrient-rich waters encourage blooms of tiny plankton, the basis of the ocean food
chain. Due to all of this, we think that spreading information and raising awareness about Antarctica is
extremely important, and can influence the trajectory of the destiny of our planet. That’s why we wanted to
bring this topic closer to our students, and for this task, we created the following Project Work File. It
contains a collection of activities on the topic of Antarctica, two detailed activites for students, a lesson
plan that we envisioned for students of 6th grade, but can be adapted to other levels of difficulty, and the
accompanying PowerPoint presentation.