Floods!

A cooperatively structured lesson about the impact of floods. Dana Nordstrom Grade: 5 Overview: A cooperatively structure lesson on the impact of flooding. Students will, in groups, discover information about local flooding, flooding from global warming, and basic information about floods. Approximate Length: Two 45 minute sessions Standards National Geography Standards Theme: Human-Environment Interaction Element: Environment and Society Standard 15: How physical systems affect human systems

New York State Standards Social Studies Standard 3.1 - Geography 1.) describe the relationships between people and environments and the connections between people and places Social Studies Standard 3.2 - Geography 1.) formulate geographic questions and define geographic issues and problems

2.) interpret geographic information by synthesizing data and developing conclusions and generalizations about geographic issues and problems Objectives Students will: Make conclusions about flooding from previous knowledge. Read articles about flooding and its impacts on people. Make inferences based on articles. Make connections between several articles depicting different aspects of flooding. Read and interpret graphs and charts. Work cooperatively to read about flooding. Materials: 3-4 Articles on the impact of floods cut into sections paper container/tray water playdough/clay houses - See lesson Teacher Resources: Beginning activity is based off of this lesson: http://wwwtc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/activities/pdf/2307_flood.pdf Articles:

 Local: IRENE: Towns in southern Ulster County assess damage http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-news/20110831/irene-towns-in-southernulster-county-assess-damage Global: 11 Islands will Vanish When Sea Level Rises http://www.businessinsider.com/islands-threatened-by-climate-change-2012-10 Informational/Scientific: National Geographics http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/floodsprofile/ Graphs and Data: CriticalThreats.org http://www.criticalthreats.org/pakistan/floods-pakistan-maps-graphs-and-keydata-august-23- 2010 Procedure: Cooperative Learning, Small Groups Before the lesson, prepare a tray with high sides(paint tray, baking pan) by filling bottom with green playdough. Make hills, valley, and carve out a river area. Add sand to bottom of river if you want. Have at least 4 cups of water. Introduction: Gather students around and give each an object to represent a house (monopoly houses, small rocks, M&M's). Have each student place a house somewhere in the landscape. Encourage students to make their homes in the hills and valleys. Pour water into the river bed at a normal height. Ask students what would happen if you poured in the remaining water. Then do so. Discuss the damages. Development: Break students up into small groups and give an article to read. Each article will focus on a different aspect of floods. Topics will cover local flooding, flooding in a

foreign location, causes of flooding, and dealing with the aftermath of flooding. Articles could be from first hand accounts of flooding, statistical data, or scientific articles. Each group will receive an article. The article will be broken up into sections for each student to read. When each student in a group has finished reading their piece, they will share the information they learned with their group. Then each group will find important points within the article and develop questions about the article. These are to be checked by the teacher to ensure students are developing good questions about the important points. Students will then rotate and read the next article, discuss what they read in the article with their group and answer the questions made by the previous group. Continue rotation until all articles have been read. Closure: When all articles have been read, and questions answered, have each group summarize their original article and what they learned. After each group summary, create notes for that topic to ensure all students have all of the information. On-going Assessment: The teacher should circulate the classroom during the activity to ensure group cooperation and assess the questions groups develop. Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on the quality of questions and their answers for other group questions. Modifications: Articles are broken up into sections. Larger or more complicated sections can be given to stronger readers while shorter sections can be given to struggling readers. Breaking up the articles in this way allow for peers to teach each other about what

they read which will help with comprehension for both high and low students. The articles themselves can also be adjusted to fit a different grade level. Questions could be provided by the teacher instead of having students develop their own questions. If you have more time, the beginning activity could be done in small groups as well. Each group could be given their own tray to design with a landscape and community.

Extensions After learning about the impacts of floods, recovery from floods can be introduced. Students could research programs that help flood victims or devise ways they can help the community during a flood.