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Overview:
This lesson asks students to consider the natural disasters that might occur near their homes and to determine where it would be best to build a house in order to avoid damage from a natural disaster or storm. They will do the Stormy Stories online activity, research natural disasters and storms, and write reports pretending their families have sought their advice on the safest places to build a new home.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, science
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 7: "The physical processes that shape the patterns of Earth's surface"
Time:
Three to four hours
Materials Required:
- Computer with Internet access
- Writing materials
Objectives:
Students will
- discuss their experiences, if any, with natural disasters;
- do the Stormy Stories activity;
- research the natural disasters that are most likely to occur in their area; and
- discuss and write reports for their families, pretending that they are going to build a house and want to know the best location to avoid damage from a natural disaster.
Geographic Skills:
Acquiring Geographic Information
Organizing Geographic Information
Answering Geographic Questions
Analyzing Geographic Information
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Ask the class if anyone has been in any sort of natural disaster, such as an earthquake, hurricane, or severe thunderstorm. What was it like? What did they do? What damage occurred?
Development:
Tell students that their job will be to match disasters with accounts of what happened during those disasters. Have them do the Stormy Stories activity. They should look at the "disaster dossiers," "jumbled files," and maps in order to figure out which kid encountered which disaster. If you can't have them work on the computers, print these features and copy them so each student or small group of students has copies.
Once students have figured out which kid faced which disaster, have them conduct research to find out which types of natural disasters are most likely to affect their home region. Ask them to take excerpts from the "jumbled files" and to write descriptions of what it might be like to live through this type of disaster.
If none of these four disasters are likely to strike your area, have students find out about severe weather or other types of events that might occur in their area and write about how they might react in those situations. Their descriptions should conclude with a list of practical tips for people who might find themselves in a similar situation. They can find such tips at Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for Kids or other Web resources.
Closing:
Ask students to pretend that their families are planning to relocate and to build a new home somewhere within approximately fifty miles of their current home (for the purposes of this activity, the home should be in the country or suburbs, not in the center of the city). Their family is still deciding where to purchase their plot of land, and they have asked their kids for advice about where they should build.
Ask students to find out about the potential natural risks associated with owning a home and to create a report that they would give their family, recommending the type of land and location they should look for.
Have students use the following Web sites to assist in their research:
National Geographic: Eye in the Sky—Nature's Fury
Basics of Flooding
Firewise
NOAA: Natural Hazards Photographs [Note: These are slide sets for purchase, but there are a number of sample photographs online.]
What is a Mudslide?
Suggested Student Assessment:
Ask students to find out about the potential natural risks associated with owning a home and to create a report that they would give their family, recommending the type of land and location they should look for.
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