To help my students be aware of how natural disasters have affected people in the past, I share real life stories with my students as we study the natural disaster. I show video clips and show data of the number of lives lost and amount of people displaced due to the disaster. I also allow my students share their stories of how disasters have affected their lives.
This year I have added some activities to help the students be aware of current events. The first activity is current event time. Prior to class each day, I create a powerpoint with links of current science news videos and stories. One website that I use is sciencedaily.com (Daily, n.d.)Then during the last seven or eight minutes of class, I share with my students current science events that are in the news and the class discusses them. When the Chilean miners were stuck in the mine, the students would come in talking about what the latest developments were in their story and the day they were rescued, we watched on the smartboard as they came up and greeted their families. We also monitor the hurricanes during hurricane season and any other natural disasters that occur. To help the students become more compassionate, we discuss what losses the people in the areas have had to deal with due to the disaster like the lives of family and friends, housing and memorabilia and their sense of security.
The second story is an assignment of an article summary on a current science event. The students select a current science news story and write two paragraphs, one summarizing their story and the second about how their story impacts people's lives. As they turn in their summaries, the students share them with the class. The rest of the class asks questions and makes comments.
Through our character education program, the students select a relief effort to contribute to and participate in fundraising events to collect money, canned goods or clothes to send to countries in need. Sometimes the collections go towards our community and sometimes they are more focused on global needs.
Daily. (n.d.) Science Daily:Natural Disaster News. Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedaily.com/news
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I like that you include current events in your science lessons. I think this integration helps students connect science to the real world. My fifth grade students need to be guided with assessing the importance of current events. I try to incorporate Scholastic Weekly and CNN student news into my classroom as much as possible, but even the content found through these kid-friendly resources is sometimes too mature for my students to understand and use.
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