Teachers’ Lounge > Curriculum links > Facing Disaster topic

The topics are integrated units with activities from several curriculum areas involving a range of thinking and learning skills.

Science

Sub strand:

Making Sense of Planet Earth and Beyond

Aim:

Students will use their developing scientific knowledge, skills, and attitudes to:

• investigate the composition of planet Earth and gain an understanding of the processes which shape it;
• investigate the geological history of planet Earth and understand that our planet has a long past and has undergone many changes;
• investigate how people’s decisions and activities change planet Earth’s physical environment, and develop a responsibility for the guardianship of planet Earth and its resources.

Level:

2–4

Achievement objective:

• investigate easily observable physical features and patterns and consider how the features are affected by people, e.g., local landscapes, rocks, soils, tides, weather;
• gather and present information about the origins and history of major natural features of the local landscape;
• investigate major factors and patterns associated with weather, and use given data to predict weather;
• collect and use evidence from landforms, rocks, fossils, and library research to describe the geological history of the local area;
• investigate a local environmental issue and explain the reasons for the community’s involvement.

Related activities:

• Oil spill
• Earthquakes
• Against the wind
• Hurricanes
• Hazard watch
• Pandemic safety
• Cyclones and tornadoes
• Ancient volcanoes
• Storms and floods

Social Studies

Sub strand:

Social Organisation

Aim:

Students will understand:

• people’s organisation in groups;
• the rights, roles, and responsibilities of people as they interact within groups.

Level:

4

Achievement objective:

• how people organise themselves in response to challenge and crisis;
  how and why people exercise their rights and meet their responsibilities.

Sub strand:

Place and Environment

Aim:

Students will understand:

• people’s interaction with places and the environment;
• the ways in which people represent and interpret place and environment.

Level:

1–4

Achievement objective:

• why particular places are important for people;
  how and why people record the important features of places and environments.
• how people’s activities influence places and the environment and are influenced by them; how and why people describe places and environments in different ways.
• how different groups view and use places and the environment;
  how and why people express a sense of belonging to particular places and environments.
• how places reflect past interactions of people with the environment;
  why and how people find out about places and environments.

Sub strand:

Time, Continuity, and Change

Aim:

Students will understand:

• relationships between people and events through time;
  interpretations of these relationships.

Level:

1–4

Achievement objective:

• ways in which time and change affect people;
• important events in their own lives.
  how past events changed aspects of the lives of.
• how and why people work together to obtain communities;
  how and why the past is important to people.
• how the ideas and actions of people in the past changed the lives of others;
  how the past is recorded and remembered in different ways.
• causes and effects of events that have shaped the lives of a group of people;
  how and why people experience events in different ways.

Related activities:

• Defining disaster
• Memorable moments
• Pandemic 1947
• What’s the plan Stan?
• Keep Cool
• South Asian earthquake
• Ancient volcanoes
• Titanic disaster
• Mapping Tangwai
• The Pink and White Terraces

English

Sub strand:

Transactional Writing

Level:

3–4

Achievement objective:

Write instructions, explanations, and factual accounts, and express personal viewpoints in a range of authentic contexts, sequencing ideas logically.

Sub strand:

Expressive Writing

Level:

3–4

Achievement objective:

Write on a variety of topics, shaping, editing and reworking texts in a range of genres, and using vocabulary and conventions, such as spelling and sentence structure, appropriate to the genre.

Sub strand:

Viewing and Presenting

Level:

2–4

Achievement objective:

Respond to meanings and ideas, identifying and describing the verbal and visual features.

Related activities:

• Heroes
• Disastrous words
• Live to tell the story
• Quakes that shake
• Wahine eyewitness news