This week we started on natural disasters, a disaster is described as “a sudden, calamitous event that seriously disrupts the functioning of a community or society and causes human, material, and economic or environmental losses that exceed the community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources. Though often caused by nature, disasters can have human origins” (IFRC, n.d.). In the first workshop we carried out some science based experiments all about disasters, these experiments included:
- Make your own Volcano
- Make your own fossil
- Durability of rocks
- Disaster areas of the world
- Crystal formation
There was also an experiment that we watched which was a visual representation of a volcano erupting. There was a beaker with a layer of red wax, a layer of sand and then topped up with water. The beaker was placed on a tripod and heated using a Bunsen burner, as the wax melted you could hear it bubbling under the sand. When the pressure became too much, the wax burst through the sand and became a solid on top of the water. The wax was used to represent the magma, the sand was representing the Earth’s crust and the water was representing the air in the atmosphere. This was a very interesting experiment but unfortunately it would be unfeasible to do in a primary classroom as they don’t have gas valves that a Bunsen burner could connect to.
The second workshop was all about natural disasters and policy. We looked at different plans that governments have in place to prevent, prepare and respond to natural disasters. We also talked about which forms of disaster we would teach in a class and how we would teach these to children. We decided that teaching how a disaster occurs rather than the grim facts of a disaster would be more appropriate for children. Leaving out the number of deaths and injuries would be more child friendly than scaring the children with the dark death toll numbers. You would have to be sensitive to the age, maturity and backgrounds of the children in your class and change your teaching to suit these. For example, you would probably not teach a class of children about a forest fire is people in the class had experiences with that kind of disaster. As an activity we looked at two case studies in our groups, on was from an earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the other was an earthquake in Haiti. In pairs within our group we looked at one of the case studies and then discussed the differences in how each country dealt with the disaster, recovered from the disaster, prepared for the disaster, and which warning systems, and help they received from other countries.
For the second week of the topic we were tasked with doing a 15 minute presentation on a given disaster. Each group picked a disaster out of a hat and they had a week to prepare for the presentation. Our group was given Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Typhoons. We were to research a definition, facts and figures, mitigation, preparation, response, recovery and teaching the subject. Each person took a section and researched it and then all the information was put together into a power point. The presentation was went well but we were all quite nervous about presenting to our peers. We are told that we should be confident in presenting to our peers because if we aren’t then it means we are not good at presenting to children. I don’t think this is right as presenting to a group of people your own age can be very embarrassing as it feels like they are judging you whereas presenting to a group of children in a classroom is completely different as they are usually interested and they respect you.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (n.d.) What is a disaster? [Online] Available: http://www.ifrc.org/en/what-we-do/disaster-management/about-disasters/what-is-a-disaster/
