Mother Nature Enraged: Contexts for natural disasters

Preparation Phase

A preparation phase allows students to situation themselves vis-a-vis recent natural disasters.  It provides a starting point for both teacher and class, and gives a perspective on learning.  It re-focuses once again on the guiding question, and allows students to begin to pose questions that have meaning.


Hook

15 minutes

Use current events to stimulate interest with the help of photos, newspaper cuttings, etc.

Consult Google News , 4,500 news sources updated continuously.
Type in the word “hurricane” for example.

Hurricane season in the U.S. falls between July and November, and is always in the news.

The following are some of the hurricanes that have made headlines in the last few years:

• Andrew in 1992
• Mitch in 1998
• Floyd in 1999
• Ivan and Jeanne in 2004
• Katrina in 2005

Consult the Environment Canada site:
http://www.atl.ec.gc.ca/weather/hurricane/hurricanes5.html

MSN_NBC also has an interesting Hurricane tracker service for hurricanes in the Americas:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7845030

Ask students about the consequences of these events:
the people involved, the costs, international aid. Ask students to name other natural hazards that may cause damage to the planet.

Review
  30 minutes

Teacher
The teacher hands out copies of the table of natural disasters (link to PDF  or Word doc) to students and explains that they must note the types of natural disasters they are familiar with by identifying their characteristics, consequences and risk level.

Students
The students fill out the table on their own. They then divide into teams of 4 to complete the table.

Material and Tasks
Using the table of natural disasters, the students make a list of natural disasters that will serve as a database for their reports.

Images of Natural Disasters
  30 minutes

Typhoon near the Philippines

Teacher
The teacher presents students with images of natural disasters and informs them that theses images will help them complete their tables. Google images

For more information, consult our growing geography collection of resources on Natural Hazards (Click here!).

Students
Still in teams of 4, the students complete the table.

Teacher
The teams share their tables with the whole class. The teacher provides the students with additional information from the statistical tables (frequency, cost and number of deaths).

To find out more, click on the “Faits et Chiffres” section in the www.prevention2000.org site. (French only). Other statistics are available from the International Strategies for Disaster site in their statitistics section here http://www.unisdr.org/disaster-statistics/introduction.htm

Problem Question
15 minutes

Teacher
The teacher uses maps to stimulate questions from students and directs the discussion towards the following question:   

Does Mother Nature attack the poorest?

The students formulate starting hypotheses with regard to the problem question.

The teacher writes the hypotheses on flip chart paper, with the problem question in the centre.