Time: Speed and Duration
Students experiment with varying the speed (fast, slow) and duration (short, long) of their movements to create different qualities.
Key Questions
- Compare the impact of fast movements versus slow movements on a dance's mood.
- Construct a short dance sequence that demonstrates changes in speed and duration.
- Predict how altering the tempo of a dance would change its emotional message.
Ontario Curriculum Expectations
About This Topic
This topic explores the powerful natural events that can reshape the landscape and impact human communities, such as earthquakes, floods, and landslides. In the Ontario Grade 4 curriculum, students look at both the causes of these hazards and the engineering solutions designed to mitigate their damage. This connects the Earth Science strand with the Structures and Mechanisms strand, showing how science is applied in the real world.
Students will investigate how different terrains are prone to specific hazards and how early warning systems work. This is also a vital space to discuss Indigenous perspectives on living in harmony with natural cycles and traditional ways of preparing for environmental changes. This topic comes alive when students can physically model the patterns of structural failure and success through collaborative engineering challenges.
Active Learning Ideas
Inquiry Circle: The Earthquake Shake Table
Groups build structures out of toothpicks and marshmallows, then test them on a 'shake table' (a tray on tennis balls). They must iterate on their design to see which shapes (like triangles) survive the longest.
Simulation Game: Flood Defense
Using a sloped tray of soil, students must design a 'town' and then build dams or levees using clay and stones. They pour water at the top and observe which engineering features protected the town from the 'flood.'
Formal Debate: Where to Build?
Provide a map with three potential building sites (near a river, on a steep hill, or on flat rock). Students must debate which site is safest from natural hazards and what engineering would be needed for each.
Watch Out for These Misconceptions
Common MisconceptionNatural disasters are 'punishments' from nature.
What to Teach Instead
Natural hazards are neutral geological or weather processes; they only become 'disasters' when they impact human life and property. Peer discussion about land-use planning helps shift the focus to human preparation.
Common MisconceptionA 'strong' building is always a 'stiff' building.
What to Teach Instead
In earthquakes, buildings often need to be flexible to absorb energy without snapping. Hands-on testing of flexible vs. rigid models helps students understand this engineering principle.
Suggested Methodologies
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Frequently Asked Questions
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