A large area of the world where the climate, the plants and the animals go together. A tropical rainforest in South America and one in south east Asia are thousands of miles apart and have the same kind of climate, the same layers of trees and the same sorts of life, which is what makes them one biome.

What is the difference between a biome and a climate zone?

A climate zone is about how warm and how wet somewhere is, and there are three of them in a primary scheme: polar, temperate and tropical. A biome is about what lives there. One climate zone holds several biomes: the tropical zone has rainforest, savannah and hot desert in it.

Which biome is the UK in?

Temperate forest. Most of the UK was broadleaf woodland before it was farmed, which is why the temperate forest card says trees that drop their leaves in autumn: oak, ash, beech and birch.

Why is the Sahara drawn with a dune and not a cactus?

Because cactuses only grow wild in the Americas. The cactus on this board stands in northern Mexico, where saguaros really are, and the Sahara and the Australian interior are drawn as sand with thorn scrub on it, which is what grows there. The Sahara is the biggest hot desert of all and the card says so.

Why is nothing drawn on the polar board except the ice?

Because nothing grows there, and that is the fact rather than a gap. The treeline is what the tundra's northern edge IS, and past it there are no trees and hardly any soil. Antarctica is drawn as the ice sheet it is, which is why it is white on the map.

Biomes

Geography · Year 3–Year 6

Seven biomes, marked where they are, with what grows in each.

About the biomes

Seven biomes on the world map: polar ice, tundra, boreal forest, temperate forest, grassland, desert and tropical rainforest. Two boards, the cold ones and the warmer ones. Tap a biome to name it, and the card above the map shows a picture of the place with what the climate is like, what grows there and where it is.

Each biome is drawn in three real places rather than one, by its own plant, standing where that plant really grows: rainforest in the Amazon, the Congo and Borneo, taiga in Canada, Karelia and Siberia. That is the idea of a biome as well as a fuller board, because a rainforest in Brazil and one in Borneo are thousands of miles apart and are the same place to live in.

It is not seven coloured bands of latitude, which is the obvious way to draw this and says things that are not true: bands put Florida and the Yangtze in the desert and the Gobi in the temperate forest. Biomes are not a function of latitude, and the Atacama and the Amazon are at the same latitudes.

The belts are still there to see. The equator, the two tropics and the two polar circles are drawn faintly underneath, and the plants fall where they fall: the rainforests on the equator, the deserts near a tropic, the conifers up by the Arctic Circle. The pattern is a pattern and not a law, and rainfall and mountains matter as much as distance from the equator.

A place can carry its own plant, which is how the desert is marked where a class expects it. A saguaro cactus is an American plant, so the cactus stands in northern Mexico and the Sahara and the Australian interior get a dune with thorn scrub on it. Same biome, same label, the plant that actually grows there.

The card carries a small picture of each one: sea ice with a berg in it, tundra pools with nothing growing above ankle height, ranks of spruce, broadleaf trees with grass between them, open grassland under a flat-topped acacia, dunes with thorn scrub, and the rainforest's layers with one giant coming out of the top. What is on the map is a mark saying where the biome is, and what is in the card is what it looks like to stand in it.

Climate Zones is the other half of this: three zones is how warm somewhere is, and seven biomes is what grows there. That is the curriculum's own split.

How to use it on your whiteboard

1Tap a plant or a marker to name its biome.
2Read the card above the map for a picture of the place, the climate, the plants and where it is.
3Tap Next to work round the board in order, and on into the second board.
4Tap Show all to put every label up at once, and Hide to ask the class again.

Questions

What is a biome?: A large area of the world where the climate, the plants and the animals go together. A tropical rainforest in South America and one in south east Asia are thousands of miles apart and have the same kind of climate, the same layers of trees and the same sorts of life, which is what makes them one biome.
What is the difference between a biome and a climate zone?: A climate zone is about how warm and how wet somewhere is, and there are three of them in a primary scheme: polar, temperate and tropical. A biome is about what lives there. One climate zone holds several biomes: the tropical zone has rainforest, savannah and hot desert in it.
Which biome is the UK in?: Temperate forest. Most of the UK was broadleaf woodland before it was farmed, which is why the temperate forest card says trees that drop their leaves in autumn: oak, ash, beech and birch.
Why is the Sahara drawn with a dune and not a cactus?: Because cactuses only grow wild in the Americas. The cactus on this board stands in northern Mexico, where saguaros really are, and the Sahara and the Australian interior are drawn as sand with thorn scrub on it, which is what grows there. The Sahara is the biggest hot desert of all and the card says so.
Why is nothing drawn on the polar board except the ice?: Because nothing grows there, and that is the fact rather than a gap. The treeline is what the tundra's northern edge IS, and past it there are no trees and hardly any soil. Antarctica is drawn as the ice sheet it is, which is why it is white on the map.