Natural Disasters topic help...

Hi everyone
In March, we're due to start a topic on natural disasters (Yr 5 and 6). This is roughly a 4 week long topic, and I'm struggling to reign in my ideas on which disasters to cover and how to teach them. (Including what the lead subjects should be throughout).
Has anyone taught such a topic before and if so, which angle did you take? I'm assuming volcanoes and earthquakes are a given, but how did you approach it?
Any help would be really appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

 

Hi everyone
In March, we're due to start a topic on natural disasters (Yr 5 and 6). This is roughly a 4 week long topic, and I'm struggling to reign in my ideas on which disasters to cover and how to teach them. (Including what the lead subjects should be throughout).
Has anyone taught such a topic before and if so, which angle did you take? I'm assuming volcanoes and earthquakes are a given, but how did you approach it?
Any help would be really appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

 

Natural disasters could include, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods etc.Some are climactic- floods & hurricanes & others are 'natural' to do with 'our restless earth' vlcanoes & earthquakes.
The last 2 times I've tackled this topic I've based it on recent disasters so Hurricane Katrina & the Haitain earthquake last year- that's the thing about this topic there' nearly always a recent 'news event' to use a starting point.
You can study causes, effects & 'What to do in . . .advice leaflets, how they're measured in fact much too much to fit into 4 weeks.

 

The Australian flooing being a pretty big natural disaster that is fresh in the news.

 

Well, those Australians do like their flooing, but I meant flooding of course.

 

We are using the Superheroes creative curriculum topic to cover natural disasters - they slot in together quite nicely.

 

Our topic is money in Year 2 - the children have setup a mini enterpise week - totally created by them, they are selling healthy fruit snack pots to the whole school to raise money for the people affected by the floods in Pakistan, Australia and Brazil. Financial capability included!!

 

Up

 

We're currently doing a topic on Michael Morpurgo's 'Running Wild' novel which is set during the Indonesian tsunami of 2004. We're also going to look at the volcano Mount Merapi and link it into our rocks and soils topic in science. I've found lots on espresso if you have access to that. The kids love learning about natural disasters.

 

Have you seen the resources on this Australian site?
http://www.science.org.au/primaryconnections/curriculum-resources/earthquakes.html
http://www.csiro.au/csiro/channel/_ca_dch2t.html
They were suggested in a reply to another question on this site about links with Australia and Science. I remembered reading your OP so thought I would pass this on - if you're still looking.

 

I did this last year and have all my planning and so on if you would like it! I was trialling teaching cross curricular but have quite a bit. Let me have your email address and I will send it on

Jen

 

Ahem. I think you'll find that climactic is when the earth moves.
Floods and hurricanes are "climatic."

 

I was thinking more in terms of floods & hurricanes caused by weather (therefore climate-related) whereas tsunamis, earthquakes & volcanoes are caused by movement of tectonic plates (often taught under the umbrella of Our Restless Earth topic).
But I'm not a geographer so ready to be corrected!

 

I was referring to the earth moving in the figurative sense. "Climactic" doesn't mean what you evidently think it does - have a look at your dictionary before you use this word in your lesson!
"Climatic" is the word used to refer to things caused by the weather.

 

Oh, see your point polli - it's a small typo clima<u>c</u>tic!
Because I meant climatic, kept reading it as such! That's why I always ask children to proof-read someone else's work, it's often difficult to spot one's own mistakes as the brain 'compensates'.

 

Hi, I was reading the posts about Natural Disaster planning and noticed that you were offering your plans. I would be very grateful if you could extend your kindness to me too. I have a Scottish P5/6 class and I will be starting from scratch so any help would be very gratefully received.

Emma

 

I'm thinking of doing this topic, too. May I have your planning, too?

 

We have just done a similar topic and I really enjoyed it. My favourite was an experiment we replicated found here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/avalanches/10858.html


We did a a lot about the tectonic plates and the children very much enjoyed role playing an earthquake. Also I showed the children some of Richard Hammonds journey to the centre of the earth (currently on BBC iplayer) Which they found fascinating.

 

HAha!!