Rivers and flooding on the web

These lesson ideas focus on river flooding, with most case studies taken from the UK. They are a natural progression from the work on rain and rivers covered in the key stage 1 unit. The suggested internet-based activities are intended to raise children’s awareness of flooding events. You may find it helpful to look at Using the CPD units and the internet before using the ideas on these pages.

The unit suggests how a variety of website resources can be used to investigate flooding on a range of scales. The investigation sequence is intended to lead on to the unit on rivers and flooding at key stage 3. As with the other units it is based on an enquiry approach, which can be adapted to your own circumstances and the needs of the children.

This unit is divided into the following sections:

1. The problem of flooding
2. Understanding flood symbols
3. Rivers that flood
4. Investigating flooding in your area
5. Flood defences
6. Flooding in the future
7. Cross-curricular and curriculum links

The problem of flooding

Flooding is now a regular feature in the media at particular times of the year, making it a very topical environmental issue. To get your investigation started show images of floods accessed through a search engine (eg Google click on images and type in flooding).

Formulating and asking questions are a fundamental part of geographical enquiry, and the more dramatic the picture the better, for example, the image of the river filling the arches of Welsh Bridge in Shrewsbury in 1998 shown on the Shrewsbury Atcham website

Design a series of questions that make children look carefully at the content of a particular image. They should begin with What? How? Why? When? Where? Who? For example, how fast is the water flowing? How much deeper is it than normal? What are the implications of this for moving about and rescuing people?

Develop the enquiry by asking physical geography questions, such as ‘what causes a river to flood?’ and ‘why do floods happen so often?’

• Children will find straightforward answers to such questions on the CBBC Newsround website, which also includes images of flooding.

Tip: While a website can provide a range of information, the language must be appropriate for the age and ability range. The writing on the BBC website is clear and straightforward, which makes it especially appropriate for use with key stage 2 children.

Once older children have investigated basic questions about flooding, they can move on to specific themes. For example, in relation to environmental issues, children could be asked to consider:

• why are houses built on flood plains?
• what could house owners do to protect their property?
• what are the consequences of flood damage?
• what are the consequences of flood defences?

and ultimately to consider:

• what is likely to be the effect of climate change on flooding?

Children could create their own fact file on specific flood events (eg those in 2000). The ‘Features’ section on the BBC Weather website includes much information relating to flooding in 2000. This can be used to show how many people are affected by flooding, major rivers that flood, the cost of flooding and the likelihood of increased flooding in the future.

Provide year 3 and 4 children with a writing frame or series of questions (an adventure trail) to guide them through a website. Give year 5 and 6 children a limit either on the number of images and explanations, the number of events reported or the timescale (eg for October 2000 only). Where necessary, and to allow for differentiation, offer guidelines on the production of their fact file. Make links with the literacy strategy.

Tip: This approach helps encourage good internet research habits.

To relate this to your own locality encourage children to check whether the area is at risk from flooding – see BBC website.

Children can then investigate responses to flooding. Two UK websites that include flood action plans are the BBC and the Environment Agency.

Children, individually or in groups, could either find one thing they should do in response to flooding or, using information on the websites as a model, create an action plan. (This kind of activity covers some of the literacy requirements such as ‘writing for different purposes’.) Link with drama by encouraging groups to perform their flood action plan. They could also dress for their parts and a narrator could explain the action.

Individual experiences of floods can really bring the investigation alive. Derek Cleaver’s account of flooding in Lewes, Sussex, in October 2000 can be used in a variety of ways. It makes a good start for writing a creative piece on flooding or creating interviews with ‘flood victims’.

Understanding flood symbols

Flood alerts have become a regular part of television weather forecasts. The use of the internet is vital in investigating these because most information about flooding can only be found on the web.

The Environment Agency developed flood warning symbols only in the last few years. Children can visit the Environment Agency flood warning pages to discover the symbols and their meanings (and the associated responses) and then write them in their own words.

Tip: Encourage children to consider whether any symbols are missing and to design their own using a drawing package. They must think about what kind of people would need to use the symbol before they write their accompanying explanation.

Rivers that flood

Investigations of specific rivers that flood regularly are particularly helpful in establishing some of the reasons for flooding.

In relation to the River Severn, which has a propensity to flood, the Kent Education website has a good section. This can be supplemented with online news reports. Such websites, for example Worcester Evening News, will need to be evaluated for language level for use by children.

The ‘River change’ section of BBC Schools website includes explanations of why rivers tend to flood in the lower sections. It will help put flood events into the sequence of river changes reviewed in the key stage 1 unit.

Tip: Use the internet to create an image bank of different types of rivers and add images of your own locality. Groups of children can use this to determine the similarities and differences between flooding in different river basins.

Investigating flooding in your area

To find information on rivers that flood or flood problems in your own area, material from local newspapers can be used to supplement information from the internet. The Paper Boy gives access to many UK newspapers.

Tip: The flood news will probably be in the news archive section.

Find your local river on a map downloaded from Ordnance Survey. Type in your postcode in the ‘Free and Fun’ section. A 1:50,000 map extract of your local area will indicate your nearest streams and rivers.

Get the children to use the map to work out the extent of a local floodplain. They could print out a colour copy, shade in the area of the flood plain and then investigate the nature of buildings on it.

The flood plain could also be studied at first hand during fieldwork.

Multimap and other websites include aerial views of the same area at 1:50,000. Potential flooding areas can be related directly to the OS map and children could look for evidence of flood defences.

Aerial views can be used to investigate the extent of flood plains. The one of York on the York City Council website, for example,clearly shows the flood plain of the River Ouse. To aid their understanding of flood plains, children could reproduce an aerial image in model form.

Flood defences

A case study is probably the best way to focus your investigation of flood defences, and a good example is the Thames Barrier. Several websites give accessible information about its purpose and use:

• The Kent Education website provides a good introduction to the Barrier.
• A panorama of the bank of the River Thames and the Thames Barrier can be found on the Explore London website
• Places to Go has a number of useful pictures which can be enlarged as do Thames Search and the Thames region section of the Environment Agency, but the text on these websites requires a higher reading level.

Pairs of lower-attaining children could be asked to copy and paste text from one website and higher-attaining children from two or more. They must choose images of the Thames Barrier and rewrite the text in their own words in relation to these images. They should consider why the barrier was needed, when it was constructed, when it is used, how it works, how often it has been used, and why it is important to defend London against floods.

You could extend this work into investigating flood defences in settlements of different sizes. London is an internationally important city, but what about towns or villages near the River Severn? What are the issues associated with building flood defences in and around them?

Use maps to work out the pros and cons of defending a variety of places against flooding.

Flooding in the future

River levels are likely to continue to rise and some places are likely to experience frequent flooding. The Environment Agency has stated that there are ‘thousands of home-owners in flood prone areas where flooding is virtually inevitable.’

Discuss as a class the issues around long-term answers to flooding. The children could investigate the BBC website, which offers some background information, and the Science Museum Antenna website, which puts the debate about temperature change and the likelihood of more flooding very succinctly, but requires a high reading level.

Cross-curricular and curriculum links

Literacy/religious education
One of the most famous stories of flooding is Noah’s flood in the Bible (Genesis 6-9). Read parts of the story together (abridged versions are available on the internet, eg here, and in storybooks) and draw the children’s attention to the geographical point of view: 40 days and nights of rain would cause a tremendous amount of flooding!

Children could think about the loss of personal possessions during flooding. They could be asked to list five personal possessions that they would rescue, five things they would miss most about their home and five things they would miss about their home area.

Using a digital video or still camera, record footage or images of children role playing their feelings about their losses. Play back the video and ask children to choose which parts or which still images offer the most realistic portrait of loss.

Tip: To extend the activity, ask children to write a short piece of text to accompany the footage or stills on a school web page. They could revisit websites mentioned above for models of the type of information included.

Of course, this flooding event might be temporary. How would they feel if the area where they had grown up was to be under water permanently?

Relate this to countries where this is happening at present, eg the impact of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China. The International River Network website, for instance, includes information with a video and pictures of the project.

This work can be extended to looking at recent large-scale flooding in other countries. The Cleanslate website includes information on recent flood disasters, some of them on a biblical scale, eg in Bangladesh and in Mozambique. Although designed for year 7, these websites are usable with higher-attaining year 6 children.

As well as links to literacy mentioned in the text, the work in this unit relates directly to the programmes of study listed below.

Geography

• Geographical enquiry and skills (1a-e, 2a-g)
• Knowledge and understanding of patterns and processes (4a-b)
• Knowledge and understanding of environmental change and sustainable development (5a-b)
• Breadth of study (6c, 6e, 7a-c)

English

• Speaking and listening: during key stage 2 children learn how to speak in a range of contexts, adapting what they say and how they say it to the purpose and the audience. Taking varied roles in groups gives them opportunities to contribute to situations with different demands. They also learn to respond appropriately to others, thinking about what has been said and the language used.
• Reading: during key stage 2 children read enthusiastically a range of materials and use their knowledge of words, sentences and texts to understand and respond to the meaning. They increase their ability to read challenging and lengthy texts independently. They reflect on the meaning of texts, analysing and discussing them with others.
• Writing: during key stage 2 children develop understanding that writing is both essential to thinking and learning, and enjoyable in its own right. They learn the main rules and conventions of written English and start to explore how the English language can be used to express meaning in different ways. They use the planning, drafting and editing process to improve their work and to sustain their fiction and non-fiction writing.
• Drama (En1/4a-c)
• Reading for information (En2/3a-g, En2/4b-c)
• Writing (En3, Breadth of study 9b, 9d)

Science

• Knowledge, skills and understanding (Sc1/1a)