Task 1-Hurricanes

I found this site, http://whatworks.wholechildeducation.org/blog/before-and-after-a-hurricane/, very useful.  Even though I do not teach Science this year,  I'd like to remember this site for future reference to use when teaching about weather.  I really liked the Sesame Street hurricane tool kit (http://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/topicsandactivities/toolkits/hurricane) and its efforts to help young children feel safe and cope with their emotions.  Students, as well, will enjoy seeing things that are familiar to them.  The Sesame Street characters will attract their attention, even if they think the characters are for babies, it will still get them interested.  I also liked the kids activity survival kit (http://www.fema.gov/kids/k_srvkit.htm).  I thought getting together a kit of "fun items" and storing it in a safe place is a wonderful idea in case evacuation has to be done.  The thinkfinity site, http://www.thinkfinity.org/hurricanes, offered good information about hurricanes but wasn't very kid-friendly.  It's a good site for teachers to get information from but I wouldn't show it to my 3rd graders because it's very wordy. (Even the links that I clicked on were too much print and not enough pictures, etc.) The whatworks site (referenced above) is more age appropriate for my students because it provides many kid-friendly links, such as the Sesame Street and activity survival kit links.

I also wanted to mention a sentence from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/teaching-911-why-how/.  This particular statement was very relevant to me: "We must engage our young people in the construction of history." We must indeed teach our students about history, no matter how difficult it is to talk about.  Students need to know the importance of historical events, such as hurricane destructions and 9/11.  As some links suggested off of our class page, it is important for teachers to talk about these items. It's up to the teacher in how much depth they provide because it's not a state objective, but it is important for students to know important dates in history.  In return, we hope they will become more compassionate for others and want to become better citizens.