Teaching demo: Teaching through social interaction

Teaching Demo: Teaching through Social Interaction
Content Focus: Avalanches
Grade level: 6th or 7th grade

1. Put objectives on board:
Content objectives: Become introduced to the concept of avalanches; begin building ideas about the science of what causes them
Language objectives: Improve focused listening comprehension; Learn vocabulary associated with avalanches including caved in, roared, explosion, swirled, panic, shovels, buried, destroyed, vibrations, jarred; Use skimming skills

2. Go over objectives.

3. Tell students that today they are going to learn about avalanches. Remind them that they have learned about tsunamis and earthquakes already. Ask—how is an avalanche different than a tsunami and an earthquake? How is it the same?

4. Hand out paragraph (cloze passage) summarizing a video clip. Have students look over it and make predictions about what it is going to say.

5. Each person is assigned one of the blanks to be listening for in the paragraph.

6. Everyone watches the video about avalanches: “Forecasting Danger” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/minutes/q_2418.html

7. After the video, recreate the paragraph with the gained knowledge.

8. Have students open their book to “A New Year’s Party Turns Deadly” about an avalanche in Canada.

9. Explain that the reading is in three parts. The first part tells us what the people experienced right before the avalanche; the second part tells us what people did immediately after the avalanche; the third part tells us what happened in the hours and days afterwards and the cause of the avalanche.

10. Assign 5 students to each part. Quickly skim to gain just enough information to be able to report back on the main ideas in the section.

11. As each group reports, point out the list of vocabulary words on the board as they come up—vocabulary in context.

12. Remind the students that the video said that people are always responsible for avalanches. What does this tell us about the avalanche in Canada?

13: Homework: Read the reading a second time for meaning. Read a third time and answer the comprehension questions on p. 91.


“Forecasting Danger”

Avalanches are becoming more/less common. In the U.S., an average of people die every year in avalanches. Avalanches are made possible because of three factors: terrain, snowpack and . However, avalanches would not occur unless you had . Avalanches happen when a layer of snow lies on top of a layer of snow. Today, scientists are able/not able to measure how weak a snow pack is. It is hoped that people will be able to make better about their activities on snow.