Lesson home

Natural disasters have had a powerful impact on American history. Encounters with floods, fires, blizzards, and earthquakes have taught survivors many lessons. Their occurrence has influenced everything from architecture and transportation systems to the development of public safety and weather forecasting methods. There are references to such events in literature, music, and films. Most importantly, natural disasters significantly affect people's lives. By examining how others have dealt with uncontrollable events in their lives, students may learn the importance of building personal and community assets to help them develop resiliency in handling future problems.

In this lesson, students will learn about an event in several ways. First, they will read a historical fiction novel based on an important natural disaster. Then, by examining primary sources, students will develop a sense of how the people attempted to cope with the forces of nature. Finally, students will apply what they've learned by assuming the identity of a witness to the disaster and creating a presentation to teach others about it.

Preparation:
Check your school's media center to see what resources are available to historic fiction reading materials and to support student research on American natural disasters. The Resources Page may be helpful in finding additional materials. Students should have background in search strategies using American Memory. Teachers may wish to refer to Research Tools to assist them. The following guides may also be helpful in teaching the unit:

1. Image Analysis Guide - questions to assist students in analyzing images such as photographs and films.
2. Personal Account Analysis Guide -  questions to help students examine accounts.
3. Song Analysis Guide -  questions to aid students in interpreting the lyrics of songs written about the events.
4. Research Notes Sheet - a worksheet with questions to guide further research of the circumstances surrounding a natural disaster.
5. Book Guide questions for reader responses.
6. Wax Museum Guide - an explanation of the format to be used to create the exhibition of the disaster.
7. Presentation Checklist - element sheet for student/teacher preparation for the presentation.

Activity One:

1. On the board or overhead, have the class brainstorm ways in which nature affects people's lives.
2. Play a song about a natural disaster such as "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, based on the sinking of an ore boat on Lake Superior because of a November storm. (There are several locations on the internet to locate information about the Edmund Fitzgerald. We chose this event because it is of regional interest. You may wish to choose one closer to your location..)
3. While playing the song, have students write five words or phrases from the song that interest them on a note card. On the back of the card, have students write their reactions to those words or phrases.
4. Discuss the following questions:
Why would the songwriter compose this song? What event may have sparked the idea for this song?
What words or phrases help you to understand the songwriter's perspective of the event?
How does listening to this song change your understanding of the people's emotions who experienced the event?
5. Next, show students a photo related to the event.  Repeat the 5 word reflection activity and group discussion.
6. Finally, present a newspaper story with a personal account of the event.  Repeat the 5 word reflection activity and group discussion.
7. Pass out an encyclopedia or history book description of the disaster.
8. Using a Venn diagram, have students compare and contrast the kinds of information about the event each medium provided.
9. Reflection Journal: have students explain how these sources differ from encyclopedia accounts of the event.

Modeling Analysis Sheet Use:
(Two class periods.)

1. Discuss students' Reflection Journal entries from previous lesson. Clarify how primary sources differ from secondary sources. Note that informational articles often do not contain people's feelings about the experience.
2. Explain lesson's goal of learning critical thinking strategies to examine primary sources.
3. Begin with the Image Analysis Guide to examine a photo of the disaster. Discuss objective and subjective information learned from the photo.
4. Next, use the Personal Account Analysis Guide to examine an account from a witness to the event. Continue to model how students may find objective and subjective information. (Note that oral histories are written in the narrator's own words and may reveal biases and prejudices which may seem inappropriate. They may also contain spelling errors or non-standard English.)
5. Using a handout of the song lyrics, have students study the song using the Song Analysis Guide.
6. On the board or overhead, compile information about the event using different colored markers for each source. Discuss which sources are more objective and which more subjective; which provide more insights into the effects the event had on people's lives; and which students found to be most memorable.

Guidance Counselor
(Two class periods)
Note: The topic of disasters and resiliency is a sensitive one for many students - some of whom have experienced extremely difficult times in their lives. We have chosen to team teach several days of this unit with our guidance counselor to allow students to discuss issues which affect them and to address coping strategies.

1. Divide the class into small groups. Hand out examples of recent natural disaster from the newspaper to each group. Have each group read the account and reports back to the class answering the following questions: What happened? How did people respond? What was the outcome? How did people cope?
2. Next the counselor asks students to write down if they have ever experienced a disaster and answer the same questions about it.  He offers students the chance to share these. He then introduces the concept of "resiliency" and asks students to share who helped them through their difficult times and what helped them to recover.
3. A list is made of the factors which help people cope with uncontrollable events in their lives.
4. The session is ended with a journal entry on how students can help other people when they face a difficult event in their lives.
5. The next session begins with a survey on developmental assets from the Search Institute. Students complete the survey and the counselor discusses the research with them that points to the importance of the assets in coping with lives hardships.
6. Students are then asked to go back to their list from the previous day and identify the number of the asset relating to each item.
7. The students are asked to survey their parents about a disaster in their lives and answer the same questions they did in class. A handout also goes home regarding the 40 developmental assets and ways families can build resiliency into their lives.

Activity Four:

Guided Reading:
(Two weeks.)

1. From the list of historical fiction novels from the Resource Page, have students select a book based on a natural disaster.
2. Help students to establish a schedule to complete the reading of the book.
3. Preview the Book Guide questions.
4. Set up a schedule for meeting with groups of students to monitor reading and discuss Book Guide questions.

Activity Five:

Coaching Independent Research:
(Four or five class periods.)

1. Using the reference materials available, such as those listed on the Resource Page, have students compile information about the event from their novel using the Research Note Sheet.
2. Direct students to the Nature's Fury page.
3. Have students examine the corresponding photo, personal account, and song lyrics for the natural disaster and complete the analysis guides.
4. Provide time for students to search additional internet resources about the event and complete the summary section of the Research Notes Sheet.

Activity Six:

Preparing the Wax Museum Presentation:
(Four class periods.)

1. Review the elements of the wax museum presentations from the Wax Museum Guide.
2. With the class, create a grading rubric using elements from the Presentation Checklist and levels of expectations.
3. Explain the use of introductions, conclusions, and organization of the body of the presentation providing examples for students.
4. Demonstrate the appropriate development and use of a visual aid.
5. Provide drafting, editing, and revision time for the oral presentation.
6. Discuss costume options which suggest relevant eras.
7. Assist students in creating posters which display photos and other artifacts related to the event.
8. Rehearse oral presentations with partners.
9. Send out invitations to parents, other classes, and community members.

Class Oral Presentations:
(Three class periods.)

1. Have students present their eye witness accounts to the class, in costume, as a dress rehearsal for the wax museum.
2. Use the grading rubric to evaluate student presentations and posters.

Wax Museum:
(One class period or evening time period.)

1. Have students present their accounts to visitors using their costumes and posters to explain the facts surrounding the event and people's reactions to it.

Evaluation and guidance summary:
 

1. Discuss with students their participation in the lesson and reactions to the wax museum experience.
2. Have students complete a self evaluation of their experience with the unit.
3. The counselor also returns to discuss what they have learned about resiliency and ways in which students can help others in their family, school and community.

Evaluation and Extension

Student products include:

1. A personal interpretation of photographs.
2. An interpretation of song lyrics.
3. An evaluation/analysis of an oral history.
4. Journal responses to the historical fiction novel.
5. A presentation including an original fictional eyewitness account of the event which demonstrates the ability to apply information gathered through research to a new composition.
6. A poster with photographs, maps, diagrams, drawings or other information about the disaster.

Students may extend their experience by examining a recent natural disaster, locating and analyzing primary source documents related to it, and noting similarities and differences to those of earlier times. Students may also examine how the events are presented in children's books using the bibliography.

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

Questions about American Memory? NDLP Reference Librarian