Two years ago Sarah Thorpe, HOD Social Studies and Geography at Iona College, revitalised her extreme natural event for the revised Geography achievement standard, with great results for her students.

Sarah couldn’t pass up the opportunity to choose an event that was global when the requirement for a localised one changed.

She was looking for an extreme natural event that was more up to date and decided to look at either tsunamis or tropical cyclones.

When she asked her Year 11 Geography students to choose between the old or the new – they voted for tsunamis.

 

Sarah thinks her students chose the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because it was such a huge natural disaster, the biggest in their lifetimes, so they connected with it more. “A lot of students talk about the event; remembering when it happened and where they were, so it shows it was really significant for them,” says Sarah.

A number of students had visited or came from places that were hit. Some knew people who were there at the time. “The relevance increased with recent tsunami threats happening in New Zealand after the Samoa tsunami. It made it all very personal and pertinent to them.”  This year Sarah plans to incorporate the Samoa tsunami into her unit as a second case study.

When Sarah first set up the unit in 2008 there were no curriculum resources available. She accessed a lot of material on the internet including YouTube. She also used some very good TV documentaries that screened at the time.

“It will be much easier to deliver the unit now with books being published, like World Vision’s textbook Extreme Tsunami. The hardest aspect to find resources for was the effects on the natural environment but the Extreme Tsunami textbook does this extremely well.”

As well as the topic connecting with students’ lives, Sarah wanted to build on their prior knowledge. “The unit has aligned quite nicely with the Social Studies we do. Our Year 9 Disasters unit focuses extensively on the social issues associated with disasters particularly in less developed countries, issues clearly shown in the aftermath of the recent Haiti earthquake.

The Indian Ocean Tsunami had such a huge impact – on citizens at all levels of society, tourists from developed countries and workers from international aid organisations. The comparisons put it all into a really good global context.”

Sarah’s students found it really straight forward to understand plate tectonics from previous work in Science and Social Studies. Sarah reports that they’ve not struggled as much as they did with tropical cyclones, even less able students found it quite straight forward.

Adding the global study achievement standard to the end of her unit was an obvious thing to do; her students love the topic and it saves time as they only have to do a bit of extra work to cover the additional standard. It also gives more opportunity for students to revisit concepts and processes, building on prior activities and presenting some of the key ideas in different ways.

As well as students choosing the extreme event they studied, Sarah gives them a variety of learning experiences. She encourages group work where students naturally form groups of different abilities in a learning community. There’s a lot of peer teaching that helps less able students and encourages collaboration and cooperation.

Their Social Studies programme includes lots of discussion and group work so, by Year 11, students are willing to discuss even quite controversial topics. Students feel confident they can have their say and share their viewpoints without being put down. Sarah says, “There’s a nice supportive atmosphere in the class where everyone can express themselves freely.”

Student motivation and interest is high with the element of it being a disaster topic. But also because they have fun engaging with a range of learning experiences for different learning styles:

• A timeline activity showing before/during/after the tsunami helps students sort and place information cards.
• Tsunami Cranium is a competitive revision tool based on the popular game. In teams, students have to draw, act out, make, or spell words associated with the tsunami.
• A mapping activity from the textbook traces how quickly the wave travelled across the India Ocean.
• Disaster in a Can involves designing a can label with the ingredients that constitute a tsunami and directions for how to deal with it.
• EQ - World Vision’s earthquake simulation game is an interactive way for students to explore impacts and solutions.

Sarah includes the four key mechanisms that facilitate learning identified in Best Evidence Synthesis (Effective Pedagogy in Social Sciences / Tikanga a Iwi). These mechanisms; connection, alignment, community and interest; are something that she develops through the unit content, activities and learning environment.

When reviewing the unit Sarah reports that student results have definitely improved, compared with their results for tropical cyclones and earthquakes. “Each year the feedback from the students has been positive. They find it fascinating, it consolidates their knowledge and they enjoy doing the global internal using related material as well.”

From Sarah’s perspective, it has been a great opportunity to develop a more global extreme natural event that had a significant impact on many lives.

“Doing the research was really satisfying, having to dig deeper and finding out things that I didn’t know had occurred.  I developed a better understanding which I was able to pass onto the students. It makes your teaching more fresh and exciting.”


Reference:  Effective Pedagogy in Social Sciences / Tikanga a Iwi

Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration [BES] by Graeme Aitken and Claire Sinnema, The University of Auckland