Ideas and evidence in Science

1. Starter - Mystery exercise

Required Resources

• Slides 2-5

Delivery

• Project Slides 2-5 and ask students to volunteer what they see in the picture. You may wish to highlight to students that climatic disasters are not restricted to continents other than Europe.
• Now ask students to discuss how these natural disasters impact on civilians and can lead to internal conflict and tensions. This connection between natural disasters and the ensuing effect on civil stability is known as a domino effect.
• You may want to draw on the examples noted in the teacher overview.

Differentiation

Lower Ability:

It may be necessary to point out clues to support identification of the natural disasters that have occurred in the slides. For example wind-torn palm trees or broken roof tiles (hurricane) or mud and debris in the street and overturned cars (flooding).

Higher Ability:

Able students may also be able to volunteer thoughts on how each climate-related disaster occurred.
Ask students to brainstorm other domino effects of natural disasters (e.g. earthquake causes pollutants to reach the water supply, in turn resulting in an epidemic of water-born cholera).