It’s a Disaster!

Introduction: A disaster is an occurrence that causes widespread destruction, great anxiety, injury and death. Throughout history, catastrophes have occurred that can happen suddenly and cause widespread destruction. Disasters are categorized into two areas: natural and man-made. A natural disaster is a violent and sudden change in the environment due to destructive, natural phenomena such as floods, earthquakes, fire, hurricanes, etc. A man-made disaster occurs as a direct result of human error or intervention.

Task: Your job with your partner will be to select a disaster from the table below, search for web resources on the disaster and create 5 constructed response questions relating to the disaster. This will be created as a web page in Front Page.

Process:

1. Review Web-Bits, a learning-based activity that gives good examples of web pages with higher order thinking skills.

2. Review Bloom’s Taxonomy to understand how to phrase the questions when building the web page.

3. Read one woman’s story about the Chernobyl disaster in Ghost Town.

4. Research the selected disaster to become familiar with how the disaster occurred, what events transpired, the injuries and loss of life and what followed after the disaster. Be sure and bookmark the sites visited.

5. Create a title for the web page and work with your partner to come up with 5 activities that will use the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. In each activity, there will be a link to a web page that will disclose the answer(s) to the activity. It will need to be easy to find the information.

6. Include backgrounds and pictures after all of the information has been typed in the web page.

Natural Disasters	Man-made Disasters
Tornado—1896—St. Louis, MO	Branch Davidian Standoff—1993—Waco, TX
Hurricane—1900—Galveston, TX	Bombing—1995—Oklahoma City, OK
Volcano—1980—Mount St. Helens, Washington	Nuclear Disaster—1986—Chernobyl, Ukraine
Earthquake—1964—Anchorage, AK	Winecoff Hotel Fire—1946—Atlanta, GA
Tsunami—1998—Papua, New Guinea	Exxon Valdez Ship—1989—Prince William Sound, AK
Tornado—1957—Ruskin Heights, MO	Hindenburg Air Ship—1937—Lakehurst, NY
Flood—1889—Johnstown, PA	Andrea Doria—1956—Cape Cod
Drought (Dust Bowl)—1930’s—United States	Flight 103 Airline Bombing—1988—Lockerbie, Scotland
Wildfire—1871—Peshtigo, WI	Hyatt Skywalk Tragedy—1981—Kansas City, MO
India Earthquake Jan. 26, 2004	Jim Jones Tragedy 1978--Guyana
	Spain Terrorist Attack 2004—Madrid, Spain