The weather outside was sunny and slightly warm for January. But inside Amy Hechler’s fourth-grade class at Seaford Manor Elementary School, there was talk of rain, wind, thunder and more.
Students wrapped up a nonfiction writing unit that focused on extreme weather. Each group wrote a newsletter and made a PowerPoint presentation about their topic, which included earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis.
As a culminating project, every group prepared a newscast about its topic. On Jan. 12, parents were invited to watch as students shared their knowledge like they were giving a report for the six o’clock news. They took on the role of studio anchors and on-site reporters.
Within the groups, each student covered a different aspect of their natural disaster, such as causes, effects and warning signs. Ms. Hechler said that students set their newscasts from places that could be impacted by those disasters, such as Oklahoma for tornadoes and Japan for tsunamis.
—Submitted by the Seaford School District
