Hurricane Resilience Part 1: Hurricanes Affect Us

Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

• Teaching Tips
  Both a digital and a hardcopy version of some activities are described, but educators may want to stay consistent with how they engage students throughout the lesson. Present the "Driving Questions" for each module early, and encourage students to post and comment on each other's posts. This can be done either digitally (through a platform like Padlet or Piazza) or hardcopy (such as on a whiteboard or a large poster board). Each of the lessons can stand on their own, so it would be easy for an educator to pick and choose what they would most like to do.
• About the Science
  This lesson introduces hurricanes, the affects of hurricanes, human impacts, and resilience. Current literature on hurricanes is cited throughout the teaching materials. Students will learn about how people prepared for and responded to particular hurricanes and analyze the amount of damage caused by different categories of hurricanes. Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.
• About the Pedagogy
  Students will use the NOAA Historical Hurricane Tracks tool to make a timeline of hurricanes that happened in their local area. Students will conduct interviews and analyze their data to learn about how local people were impacted by specific hurricanes. The learning objectives are clearly stated for the entire curriculum and for individual lessons. There are several activities throughout the curriculum that will appeal to different learning preferences and student interests. The curriculum is scaffolded to build lessons on one another, it is recommended that the entire curriculum is taught together (although the different parts may be used separately). There are 3 parts with multiple modules within each part. Only Part 1 is linked in this CLEAN review. This is a very well organized and thoughtful activity with a comprehensive teaching sequence. Lesson plans have scripts and guides for teaching from slides and engaging/encouraging students. Very engaging for students who have personal experiences with hurricanes.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  Each lesson clearly outlines materials, time requirements, and teaching tips. All software used is free (Google slides, Google survey). Some individual activities have materials that may be somewhat uncommon in high school classrooms such as colored pencils, markers, or graph paper.