Teaching Hurricane Sandy

    I teach at a middle school in Northern Virginia. Our schools were closed for two days because of Hurricane Sandy, but our county's damage was minimal (some roads were flooded, some power outages) compared to NYC/NJ/ Long Island and other coastal areas. We were lucky and returned to school with a delayed opening the day after the storm passed - Wednesday, October 31st.

    Shortly after Hurricane Sandy hit, the NY Times came out with this blog post about Teaching Hurricane Sandy: Ideas and Resources. Feeling inspired, I quickly edited my lesson plans for that week. On the Thursday and Friday after the storm, I was scheduled to teach an "Intro to Podcasting" lesson to five 8th grade Language Arts classes as part of my media literacy teaching. Typically in the lesson, I explain to students what podcasts are, how they can be shared, and we listen to a few examples of podcasts. After the lesson, they break up into groups and write a script for their own podcast based on themes related to a book they had read in class. Then they come back as a class, and record their podcasts on the library computers using microphones and Audacity. With this particular class the book they read was Flowers for Algernon. I decided for this lesson we would listen to NPR podcasts about Hurricane Sandy. I found several with a quick search on NPR. The students were really interested, and it was an opportunity to hear different perspectives and reports about the damage, and open up some dialogue about this type of media and the hurricane.

    I was also scheduled to do a bunch of Book Talks/Trailers with 7th Graders.  The SOL testing (we use Standards of Learning, not Core) has a large percentage of nonfiction to test for reading comprehension, so teachers want to see students reading more nonfiction, in addition to fiction/novels, etc. Bingo. I showed part of this video I found on YouTube from the Wall Street Journal, which triggered discussions and questions about Hurricane Sandy. I was able to teach students about the materials and resources we have in the library to answer their questions (i.e. nonfiction books about hurricanes, natural disasters, weather, etc.).

    As part of a school-wide program, I have a group of 12 students who I advise once a week for 20 minutes. As a side project, the students want to create a Graphic Novel using Comic Master, which is a free site I learned about at a VAASL Conference session on AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, presented by Heather Moorefield-Lang. The students plan to create the Graphic Novel and then print it, distribute it, and collect donations for Hurricane Sandy relief in return. We are just beginning this project and it will probably take a while since I don't see the students often or for a long time, but they are excited. I am letting them take the lead on this, so we will see where it goes. This is not a graded project.


How are other school librarians teaching students about Hurricane Sandy?