Discovering Natural Hazards with 2nd grade

This post is geared towards my Texas teachers! However, any teacher might take away some kind of nugget of info you might find useful! 

Here in the Lone Star State, depending on where exactly you are located, you can experience a small array of natural disasters. We don't have them all (thank goodness) but we have seen hurricanes, tornadoes, fires and  small earthquakes (although not as prevalent as some places).

Again, depending on where you are living does somewhat determine which of those you may have experience with. I mean we do take up a huge chunk of land area in the lower USA. 

We are required to teach natural hazards/disasters in second grade so while trying to plan with the 2nd grade team I wanted to steer them in more of an inquiry based learning for this unit. We didn't have just an abundance of time for this unit (imagine that right?) and it also did not integrate with reading nicely (traditional literature was happening at the moment). 

The first step was gathering some resources for the kids to look through, use, read, etc. I made each teacher a tub of books from the literacy library that included, but not limited to, some of these types of titles. 

 

We also have other resources we can pull from as well other than just books on campus. There are always online resources to scour ahead of time and pull out what is appropriate for your grade level (2nd grade in this case). 

Now these were not the only hazards we learned about. We stuck to the TEKS and out unit plans outlined by the district and that included: tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, volcanoes, and we also briefly touched on tsunamis. 

Since this was being taught over the course of 3 weeks I created an anchor chart outline they could use and build on as they discussed and learned. I wanted it to include the key essential questions outlined in the TEKS and our unit plans. I am a very visual person myself so when I am brainstorming for the teachers I also like to include an example for them to be able to see what I am envisioning and they can give me feedback as needed too! So this is the outline and example of what  I saw them utilizing with the kids as the main class recording device. 

So here is somewhat of a break down of what I envisioned throughout the unit. 

*Break kids into 5 different groups (one natural disaster per group).

*Facilitate some time for the kids to ask questions among the group about the particular disaster they are assigned.

*Each group can get some books (or use IPADs or other electronic devices with online resources) that pertains to their designated topic and start looking for maybe some of the key questions from the anchor chart or just collaborating with a few new facts from the text or pictures they are discovering. 

Now how you go about getting that information back to the whole group from each small group is up to you. It can be determined by how long you have each day, how long your unit is, preference as the teacher, etc. This is definitely not intended to be done in one day..mainly small chunks of time as you build on  the info. 

Some ideas may be:

-gather whole class back together after pre-determined time allotted to search books, ask questions, look for answers (that may take multiple days of smaller chunks of time)

-have each group provide any info they learned that can answer those questions on the anchor chart and discuss as a whole group

-do one natural hazard a day

-work through one whole column with multiple disasters a day

-small groups make posters to represent the info they did find to answer the anchor chart questions (they may not find it all and that is okay) then do a gallery walk where each group gets to learn about the others, then take it to the large anchor chart another day

-give the kids in the small group the sticky notes to go through and answer the questions from the large anchor chart and they can fill out as much as they learned from their research and then as a class you can go back and fill in the spots they were unsure of or needed guidance

-you can also put up pictures of a locations around the world that experience various hazards to facilitate discussion and questions

-show pictures of places BEFORE a natural disaster occurred and then an AFTER picture to discuss and maybe help lend some answers to the questions on the chart

-content WRITING would fit nicely into this unit as well
EX: Would you live in a location a ____________ can occur frequently? Why or why not?

So you can see there are a ton of ways to be able to facilitate some discovery and learning on this topic and probably a lot more I am not thinking of currently. 

You may also have some time to watch some video clips for the kids to get more of an understanding as needed. If you have access to Discovery Education you can find some videos aligned to the topic and narrow it down by K-2. BrainPop Jr. also has a video on "Fast Land Changes" that might be helpful as well! 

Here are some examples from the teachers anchor charts! You can see some shared the pen and some chose to write what the kids said, both totally okay! 

 Hopefully this little post gave you some new ideas or even maybe just was the tip of the iceberg for you that will help you launch a natural hazard unit in your classroom that spawns many other ideas I didn't even list!

**TEKS Covered: 2.7A, 2.7B, 2.7C

Have a BLESSED week! 

"So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God."

Hebrews 4:16