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Learning Activities
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1. Explain the tasks required by the end of the unit:
- writing a narrative on the impact of a natural disaster on a community
- writing information report on one type of natural disaster
- jointly designing and producing a poster to support aid to communities
suffering from a natural disaster
- giving an oral information report on one type of natural disaster
- giving an oral personal response to a news account of a natural disaster
- jointly writing an explanation of one type of natural disaster
- writing a procedural explanation about how to make a working model of a
volcano
- Explain that the students learn how to do these things by:
- Reading and talking about different types of natural disasters
- Examining and deconstructing examples of the different text types
- As a whole class, jointly constructing different types of text
- In pairs or groups, producing different text types
- Writing their own independent texts
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2. Negotiating the Field
- Brainstorm: write "Natural Disasters" on the board.
List on cards
Natural disasters usually cause great harm to people and damage the land.
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3. Building the field
- Ask students to suggest other ways to catagorise the different disasters
eg. Air, Water, Land or Weather, Earth.
- Jointly organise cards on board under those headings.
- Mix the cards up again and have the students group and record them
individually under their headings.
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4. Building the Field
- Definition match worksheet
- Reivew the purpose of information reports
- Introduce headings for information report (See worksheet: What, where,
how p. 129?)
- Review the purpose of information reports
- Discuss who might read this information - parents, other Year 5 and 6
students, younger students. Write with the audience in mind.
- Revisit the structure of information reports, using sample
reports. Highlight and revise topic sentences
- Explain that the information will also presented orally to the class
- Provide criteria for the information report, including the use of
diagrams, headings, etc.
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5. Locating information about natural disasters
- D: Shared reading - Natural Disasters Big book [by Janeen Brian, Era, 1992 - Magic Bean In fact series]
The teacher demonstrates how to use a table of contents, index and how
to read a diagram
- Notetaking activity
- Students vote on what natural disaster they would like to research
- Students work in Guided Reading Groups
- One student reads to the group a text on the natural disaster that they
have chosen.
- Other students make notes onto Seven Strips (See worksheet)
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6. Group Activity - Accessing information
- Students work in groups of 4 - 6, researching a chosen disaster.
- Students negotiate form and style of presentation or use GRASP report scaffold. (See proforma)
- Students begin to draft an information report about their choosen type of disaster
- Work on the information report continues throughout the unit
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Assessment Task:
- Independently construct a written information report
- The information report is due in the second last week of the unit
Go to Assessment Rubic
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7. Introduce explanations:
- What are they used for?
- Who would be able to explain how a volcano or tornado occurs?
- Why would you need to know?
- Show the difference between information report, explanation and procedure using sample texts
- Discuss the purpose and structural differences noticed
- Review earthquake terminology
- Read Earthquake chapter in big book
- As groups the students begin to draft written explanation of one type of
natural disaster
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8. Recording information about natural disasters
- Before and after viewing worksheet. (See proforma)
- Notetaking from volcanoes video
- Students record what they already know about volcanoes in the Before
and After section of the worksheet.
- Whole class views video
- Rewind and on the same day view a small section of the video
- Students record what they recall of the video on the After section of
the worksheet
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9. Jigsaw activity
- Students prepare material for jigsaw activity where they share in groups information about the topic
- Teacher models presentation of information to groups
- Students prepare information to share with a new group
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10. Students form new groups with all topics represented in each group
- Regroup class after discussion and report on activity
- information
- style
- availability of material
- use of graphics
- use of other visual aids
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11. Topic groups plan presentation for whole class
- Points to consider:
- presentation style
- accuracy information presented
- use of graphical aids
- manner of presentation
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12. Presentations over one or maybe two weeks
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Assessment Task:
Presentations assesses individual
Oral Presentation rubric
Go to Assessment Rubic
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13. Whole class matrix
- After student presentations, whole class adds information to the matrix
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14. Earthquake Deconstruction
- Show large version of How Do Earthquakes Happen?
- Use tables to show how the plates collide
- Model the stages of the explanation using two desks
- Label the stages
- title
- phenomenon
- sequence
- Mix the paragraphs up and have students sort
- Point out the structure that makes the explanation flow and the use of
when and as conjunctions
- Students cut and paste individual worksheets
- Students highlight the structure on their sheets - circle the conjunctions
- Other deconstruction activities:
- Cloze passage with topic words and conjunctions removed
- Read another explanation and highlight the structure. (See stapler explanation)
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15. Building the field: Cyclones
- Shared reading
- big books
- other print and screen-based material on cyclones
- Class notes down main information on how cyclones occur
- Define new terms
- View the cyclone segment from Weather video by Mike Bailey
- Conduct simple experiements to demonstrate warm air rising and
cool air sinking
- Label cyclone worksheet
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16. Jointly construct an explanation of how a cyclone occurs
- Focus on the use of sequence and appropriate conjunctions
- Discuss how a diagram helps make an explanation clearer and more explicit
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Assessment Task:
Jointly construct written explanation of one type of natural disaster
The explanation is due in the third last week of the unit
Go to Assessment Rubic
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17. Volcano Model
- Students jointly read the procedure about how to construct a model volcano
- In groups of three or four the students construct the model
- Groups of students demonstrate their models to the whole class
- Students independently write a procedural explanation about how to make
a working model of a volcano which could be used by younger students to
actually make the model
- Students demonstrate their own working models to a class of younger students
- Students then read their procedural explanations to the younger children
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Assessment Task:
- Independently written procedural explanation about how to make a working
model of a volcano
Go to Assessment Rubic
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18. Discuss why it might be important to have instruments to measure the wind
- List the reasons
- What sort of organisations do we have to cope with serious wind storms?
- List them and what each one does
- State Emergency Services
- Fire
- Police
- Ambulance
- Air rescue
- Coast Guard
- What would happen without these services?
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19. How do natural disaster affect people?
- Read a variety of recounts of disasters
- Pompei
- Mt St Helens
- San Fransico Earthquake
- Sydney bushfires
- PNG Tsunami
- Discuss the structural differences between factual recounts, information
reports and narratives
- Students independently write a narrative about the impact of a natural
disaster on a community
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Assessment Task:
Narrative on the impact of a natural disaster on a community
Go to Assessment Rubic
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20. Communicative Crossword
- In pairs the students design a communicative crossword using topic
words and field knowledge of natural disasters
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21. How do natural disasters affect people
- Students complete the activity sheet
- Students independently draft an oral personal response to a news account
of a natural disaster
- Presentation of oral personal responses
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Assessment Task:
Oral personal response to a news account of a natural disaster
Go to Assessment Rubic
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22. Oral discussion
- Should we send aid to disaster victims in other countries?
- What is our country's responsibility?
- What is the individual's responsibility?
- How is money raised?
- Examine posters used to persuade people to give money
- Jointly deconstruct an example poster examining
- Use the visual proforma as a guide
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23. Design brief: an appeal poster
- Discuss the techniques used by designers of posters to persuade
- In pairs students design and produce a poster to support aid to
communities suffering from a natural disaster
- Students may use real or fictious disasters
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Assessment Task:
Assess poster on its information, layout and persuasive qualities
Go to Assessment Rubic
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24. Consolidation - Question and answer game
- Students write down a question and the answer on separate pieces of
paper about the topic
- Papers distributed to other students
- Students read their question / answer and then move about the room to
find the person with the matching paper
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25. Information Reports
- Students read one another's information reports
- Students discuss and critique these reports
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Assessment Task:
- Independently constructed written information report on one
type of natural disaster.
- These information reports have been worked on during the whole unit
- Information reports are assessed using task sheet criteria and
information report structure
- paragraphs
- grouping of information
- topic sentences
- punctuation and spelling
Go to Assessment Rubic
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26. Text type recognition activity
- Students individually read a text
- Students place the text into the pile for:
- Narrative
- Literary Recount
- Observation
- Literary Description
- Personal Response
- Review
- Factual Description
- Information Report
- Procedure
- Procedural Recount
- Factual Recount
- Explanation
- Exposition
- Discussion
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Assessment Task:
Recognition of text types
Go to Assessment Rubic
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