The students will be introduced to the topic of safety and powerlines by watching short videos and looking at photographs that show damaged power lines.

They will be given time to analyze the following ice storm from their own and surrounding cities.

Learning Goals

1. Students will write an informational piece on natural disasters, supporting safety with researched facts.
2. The students will learn about electricity, the dangers that come when powerlines are damaged or touching other objects, and information about how to keep safe in these situations.
3. Students will assess, evaluate the dangers of damaged electrical lines after natural disasters.

Students will obseve videos of powerlines after storms. They will analyze data from a recent Oregon winter ice storm and notice connections to power lines and electricity.

Students will test the conductivity of different materials by creating a simple circuit and observing a light to determine if the items complete the circuit and allow electricity to flow through them. This lesson can be done digitally by using phet simulators or as a hands-on activity with squishy circuits.

Students will use their existing knowledge of natural disasters and powerline safety to create a pamphlet that convinces their audience that it is unsafe to be near power lines when theya re touching a tree or when they have fallen on the ground.

Students will learn about the costs of natural disasters while learning how to read numerical data from graphs through a Slow Reveal graph.

This lesson is designed to be encorporated in as an optional session in Lesson 3: Writing and Creating an Information Piece, but also works as a stand alone lesson.