Unit Guide

“With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility”:

Natural Disasters, Climate Change and Human Contribution

Julie V. McCann

In this three-four week unit, elementary students will learn vocabulary and concepts of natural disasters and climate change. Third graders will read and discuss fiction and non-fiction stories about natural disasters. Following Common Core standards, the children will be able to read and answer questions, produce stories, engage in collaborative discussions and work in groups. The students will participate in classroom activities, engage in readings and produce their own projects to share knowledge about these topics to their community. The purpose of the unit will be for students to be able to see that they are connected to the environment and how climate change has affected the quantity and the severity of storms and natural disasters. At the conclusion of the unit, students will work in groups to create a culminating project. These products will be pamphlets, posters or some other means by which they can inform their community about how to deal with natural disasters, about climate change, the effects of climate change on storms and other natural disasters, and how these effects may be mitigated through changes in human behavior.