Activity

minutes

Warm-up (see attached for a version to modify, print and copy on transparency sheet)

For each of these sentences, write your opinion and then one sentence to back it up.

1)    If a huge earthquake* were to hit San Francisco tomorrow, the city would be prepared to handle it.

2)    If a huge earthquake were to hit San Francisco tomorrow, my family would be prepared.

3)    City, state and federal government should be responsible for helping people deal with natural disasters.

4)    The government helps all people equally when it comes to things like natural disasters.

5)    In a natural disaster, prisoners and undocumented immigrants do not deserve the same assistance from the government as other people do.

*clearly, modify these statements to fit the natural disaster most likely to impact where you live

5

Four Corners

In each corner of the room, one of the following signs is hung: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree (see attached for printable signs). Students are given the following instructions:

“We’ll be doing an activity in which you’ll be moving around the classroom, stating your opinion and supporting your point of view. Bring your warm-up paper with you.

I’ll be reading the statements from the warm-up. After I read the statement, stand in the corner of the room under the sign that represents your opinion -- strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree. After you move there, I’ll be asking different people in that opinion group to back up their opinions with explanations.”

Depending on schedules, behavior and engagement, this activity can take longer and be even richer.

10

KWL (Know, Want to know, Learned: unearthing background knowledge)

Teacher reminds students:

“We’ll be studying people’s stories from Hurricane Katrina for the next few days. Before we get going, let’s stop and see what we know and want to know about HK.”

If you’re doing the longer set of lessons, you may want to let them know that this study will inform the persuasive letters they’ll be writing.

For two minutes, students make a list of things they know about Hurricane Katrina, and another list of things they want to know. Their ideas can come from the reading the night before or from their own memories. After two minutes, chart out whole class’s ideas on class KWL chart, to be kept up as lessons progress.

10

Extension option:

This would be a good time for students to spend some time with images from Katrina. See the “materials” section of the Note to Teachers for some website suggestions.

10+

Expert Groups (see attached)

In groups, students work together but each fill in a worksheet on the individual assigned to them. Depending on what you assigned them to read for homework, they should be able to answer through question 3 today. Make sure to note the difference between questions 1 and 2.

Depending on your school’s schedule, when they’ve answered all possible questions for today, they might be able to start writing responses on their presentation chart (see Model for Presentation attachment).

15

10

Closure: Revisit KWL

Ask students to look at the class’s KWL chart. Ask students to add to their own KWL notes from the beginning of class. Teacher charts out students’ additional ideas onto the L and W sections of the chart

5+

Homework for the night of Day 1:

Read the remaining pages of your individual’s story. Talk to the text or do Metacognitive Reflections.