Lesson home

In this lesson, you will explore the ways natural disasters have affected American lives. You will examine records people made of their experiences. You will try to find out how people felt who lived through each event. How did they recover? What changed because of their experience?  What lessons did they learn? When you finish, you will put yourself into the shoes of an eye witness to one of American history's most remarkable events and tell the story  of the disaster in your own words.

The Task

The Steps

1. Select a book from the Bibliography.
2. As you read the book, complete the Book Guide pages.
3. Research the facts surrounding the natural disaster described in the book by using various Resources.
4. Fill in the Research Note Sheet as you find facts about the event.
5. Review the suggestions for examining artifacts by using various Research Tools.
6. Use the Nature's Fury Lesson Page to locate artifacts from American Memory at the Library of Congress related to the event.
7. Examine the photographs and answer the questions on the Image Analysis Sheet to help develop your understanding of what the disaster looked like.
8. Study the personal account and complete the items on the Personal Account Analysis Sheet to understand the feelings of the people who witnessed the event.
9. Read through the lyrics of a song and try to determine how people reacted to the event and what they learned from their experiences by completing the Song Analysis Sheet.
10. Search for more information about the disaster using American Memory or Other Resources to expand your understanding.
11. Summarize the information you have learned from the book and the research.
12. After collecting your data, write your own fictional account describing both the facts surrounding the event and the feelings of a person who witnessed the natural disaster. In your account, include how the event affected the life of the person as well as how s/he was able to recover.
13. Then, dress up in clothes similar to those people of the time wore and, acting as a witness to the event, give a presentation to others of your account.

Expanding your knowledge...

In the first part of this lesson, you examined how Americans dealt with important historic natural disasters. Many things have changed in the century that passed since they occurred. How do people in more recent times cope with such events? Use your research skills to compare the reactions and recovery of people in more modern times to similar events. Determine if they were better prepared to deal with the destruction and despair which accompanied a memorable encounter with Nature.

Based on the disasters you examined, evaluate what personal and community characteristics people had which gave them their ability to recover. What changes resulted from this event? What precautions or preventive measures were taken to lessen a future event? What lessons does this event have for your own community? Write an essay to discuss your conclusions.

Examine a children's book about the event from the bibliography. Arrange with your teacher to read it to an elemntary class and then tell them what you learned about the event.

Library of Congress URL: http://www.loc.gov/

Questions about American Memory? NDLP Reference Librarian