The Desert Biome

Objectives:

• Students will be able to describe the climate and characteristics of the desert biome.

• Students will be able to state where deserts are located.

• Students will be able to name plants and animals that are native to deserts and explain how they are adapted to survive there.

Suggested Grades:

4th Grade - 5th Grade - 6th Grade

Lesson Procedure:

Print the reading comprehension worksheet passage and questions (see below).

Students should read the passage silently, then answer the questions. Teachers may also use the text as part of a classroom lesson plan.

Lesson Excerpt:

Deserts are very dry biomes where the total amount of precipitation each year is only ten inches or less. Because there is so little precipitation in the desert, deserts are sandy or rocky and do not contain many plants. There is at least one desert in each of the seven continents. Some deserts are very large, like the Sahara Desert in Africa. In fact, the Sahara is the largest desert in the world. It stretches from the east to the west coast of the continent and covers an area of 3.5 million square miles. That’s much larger than the entire United States!

China’s largest desert is the Gobi Desert. The Gobi has an area of about 500,000 square miles - two times the size of the state of Texas. The Atacama Desert in South America is another large desert. It extends from the southern tip of Peru all the way south to Chile. Within this desert is the driest place in the world. That is Arica, Chile, where it only rains about three-one hundredths of an inch each year.

Continued...