Escaping the Giant Wave Lesson Plan

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Escaping the Giant Wave is a perfect way to introduce reference skills to the students with a high interest topic--tsunamis. The students liked working together to accomplish a goal on the computers.

OBJECTIVE
Students read and organize information, and with increasingly complex assignments and tasks, develop the skills to use simple materials of the reference system to obtain information.

MATERIALS

• Escaping the Giant Wave by Peg Kehret
• Tsunami Work Sheet

SET UP AND PREPARE
This lesson is done in conjunction with a media specialist. The classroom teacher reads the book with the class and the media specialist teaches internet reference skills on the topic of tsunamis. The media portion of the lesson will be one 45 minute lesson in the media center.

Be sure to check the websites ahead of time--they do change. I used specific websites I wanted the students to explore rather than letting them Google or Yahoo and look for information on their own.

REPRODUCIBLES

1. Tsunami Work Sheet (PDF)
   

DIRECTIONS
The classroom teacher will bring the class to the media center about midway through the reading of the book. The students will use specific websites to gather information about tsunamis and determine if the information in the book is fact or fiction.

The students will work together in groups of three or four to complete a tsunami reference work sheet. Explain and show the students how to find the bookmarked websites. They are to use only these websites for this assignment. (See Related Resources)

LESSON EXTENSION
Related Resources
These are the two websites I bookmarked for the students to use:
www.fema.gov/kids/tsunami.htm
www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids/9610/kwave

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