Erica M. Mentone
Goals
Students will compare and contrast the recovery cycle in nature, to the way that civilization recovers after a disaster.
Materials
The book
Nature Recovers
Chart paper
Markers
Photos of damage from disasters
Procedure
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1. The teacher will divide the class into small groups and give each group photographs of natural disasters and damage from natural disasters. You can find these by doing an image search on the Yahoo search engine or by going to any of the newspaper archive sites listed in the resource section of this unit http://www.earthquakearchive.com/Home.aspx., http://www.thehurricanearchive.com/Home.aspx. http://www.tornadoarchive.com/Home.aspx .
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2. The teacher will allow students time to look over the photographs and discus them.
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3. The students will brainstorm a list of things that these people need to do to begin the recovery cycle.
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4. Each group of students will present their pictures and their lists to the class.
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5. While the students are presenting, the teacher will generate a class list of things that need to be done to recover from a disaster.
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6. The teacher will read aloud the book
Nature Recovers.
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7. The students will discus the differences between the way nature recovers and how people recover.
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8. Each student will create a Venn diagram that shows the differences and similarities between nature's recovery cycle and civilization's recovery cycle.
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**Note: in order to differentiate instruction, you may have some students work in groups, draw pictures, or dictate instead of writing.
Possible Extensions
Write a newspaper article to match one of the disaster photographs; write a caption for one of the disaster photographs; write a poem pretending you were involved in one of the disasters in the photographs; create a T chart, on one side explain the recovery cycle for a forest, on the other side explain the recovery cycle for a city.
