What is a natural disaster and how are people’s lives affected by them?
In order to begin tackling this question sixth graders were tasked with not only researching different forms of natural disasters, but also tasked with creating miniature sets for natural disaster simulations.
Each group of students had to:
1)identify roles for their simulations
2)create supply lists
3)generate facts and questions
4)storyboard the events they plan to simulate
5)write out dialogue capturing responses to the simulated events, and finally
6) construct their sets
Students had the option of exploring tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Throughout the construction phase students have been tracking their progress through daily project updates and reflections.
RST.6-8.3. Follow precisely a multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks.
RST.6-8.7. Integrate quantitative or technical information expressed in words in a text with a version of that information expressed visually (e.g., in a flowchart, diagram, model, graph, or table).
WHST.6-8.7. Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
WHST.6-8.9. Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis reflection, and research.
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