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Droughts Lesson Plan
The Drought Lesson Plan provides teachers and students with an opportunity to investigate the Australian climate, watertable and the impacts of drought through individual or classroom activities.
This lesson challenges students to learn more about drought by asking them to:
An Assessment Guide for teachers is also included within this lesson plan.
Key Learning Areas
The Key Learning Areas (KLAs) for this lesson plan include:
- Literacy
- SOSE
- Science
Objectives
The objectives of this lesson plan are to ensure that students are able to:
- begin to understand how a drought occurs
- develop an awareness and understanding of the effects of a drought.
Please note: This lesson can be modified to incorporate other KLAs and to meet the needs of the students and specific content taught.
Get the Facts
Australia is the world’s driest continent. Some areas of Australia receive high amounts of rainfall, but much of it is an arid landscape. What happens if there is no rainfall? How does this affect the people and the land (emotionally, economically and quality of life).
Teachers can begin to discuss Australia’s climate and look at a map to determine how much of Australia is made up of a type of desert. As a class you can brainstorm how this affects the population and how this impacts on our current drought situation.
Resources
Students should have access to the Internet, newspaper articles, life experiences and other media.
Cause of a drought
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The watercycle
(see the text on the left for more information)
Look at the water cycle and watertable image on the right side of this page and answer the questions that follow.
Take Time to Investigate!
What is the watertable and where is it situated?
How do the water levels of the watertable fluctuate and why is this so?
Teachers can expand further with students by examining the different materials in the water at different levels (does the water deteriorate as the water level drops). A good website to look at is the Water Cycle page from the USGS as it provides information and images to illustrate the workings of the watertable.
You can also discuss:
- what is meant by lowering the watertable?
- why does this occur during periods of drought?
- who is affected by the lowering of the watertable?
Effects of the drought
- Who is affected by the drought?
- How are they affected (emotionally, socially, physically, mentally and economically)?
- What happens to the land/animals/people?
- Are there different stages and types of drought?
- What areas in Australia are most affected?
- Look at the global map. What parts of the Earth are affected by droughts? How have they been affected and how long have they been in droughts for?
Students would now have realised that there are different effects of droughts. Which of the effects of droughts are not associated with droughts in Australia? Why is this the case?
Assessment Guide
To end the lesson, students can write a poem (not necessarily having to rhyme) about how the drought has affected them. They can pretend to be a farmer and write about the harsh land and the hard times that they are facing.
You may want to brainstorm with the students about some of the points that could be brought into the poem. Alternatively, they could focus on one effect. It may be more effective to carry out an empathetic exercise for the students.
These poems can be shared with the class or school. For those that finish early, they can accompany their poem with some artwork.