How to use this STEM resource
This STEM resource has been written for the leaders of STEM activities to use with key stage 3 students (age 11–14). However, there is no reason why younger students should not be given the opportunity to investigate the STEM aspects of disaster response. The activities could also be adapted and extended to provide stretch and challenge for older students.
The desired learning outcome is for students to create a presentation that provides a reasoned answer to the ‘big question’, How do engineers save lives in the aftermath of a natural disaster? Students should arrive at their answer having investigated solutions to challenges arising from the aftermath of natural disasters.
The teacher’s version of the resource provides prompts, answers and notes to help support teachers, STEM ambassadors and STEM club leaders in their delivery of the resource. This can also be downloaded from the Download PDF link in the banner above.
There is also a booklet of student activity support sheets. The student version of the resource includes all the activity sheets, but none of the prompts, notes and answers or support sheets. The intention is that teachers select only those support sheets which will enable each student to carry out a particular challenge effectively without ‘spoon-feeding’ them or denying them the opportunity to demonstrate higher order investigative and design skills.
Overview of the student activities
All of the activities are meant to be carried out in groups of four students. Working effectively as a team is an important engineering skill.
Introductory student activities
The introductory activities are short ‘orientation’ activities. Before students can progress to the problem-solving activities, they need to be aware of the range of types of natural disaster, and the kinds of problems associated with them. It is also helpful for them to have some sense of scale in terms of time and speed of disasters.
Problem-solving activities
The student problem-solving activities are organised into two groups: immediate problems and longer-term problems. Parts of each activity are signposted by three headings: Information, The situation and The challenge.
- Information provides general information about the real world problem caused by a natural disaster and how engineers are involved in providing solutions;
- The situation and The challenge provide a more closely defined context and a brief for the problem solving activity.
Presentation activity
This is the plenary activity, in which students use the information and insights they have gained through the introductory and problem-solving activities to present an answer to the ‘big question’, ‘How do engineers save lives in the aftermath of a natural disaster?’