May 20-26 is Hurricane Awareness Week in Texas. I thought I would post some resources on the blog to help you plan lessons during the week if you’d like to participate.

The Governor’s Division of Emergency Management has a website with a lot of information about how to be prepared for and safe during hurricane season.

Naturally, unitedstreaming has several good videos on the topic. My favorite is “Raging Planet: Hurricane”. It has a lot of good video and explains how hurricanes are formed, how they are monitored, and the damage they cause.

Discovery Science Connection has an interactive “Create a Hurricane” that is very informative and lets students try to make their own hurricane. There are also a lot of good video clips about hurricanes.

NOAA has all kinds of information and interesting storm trackers.

Various websites offer lesson plans and activities: Education World; National Geographic Xpeditions; Hurricane Lesson (students are mayor of Pensacola Beach, FL, and have to make decisions about evacuating residents).

Hurricane animations: fly through a 3-D model of a hurricane at Hurricanes: online meteorology guide (this one is kind of high-tech so probably not for the younger kiddoes); BBC NEWS Animated Guide to Hurricanes; Classzone by McDougal Littell; NPR: Demonstration of the Saffir-Simpson scale (this is a really nice visual for the scale).

Let’s all be prepared and safe during hurricane season! 

A special thanks goes out to NASA for the beautiful hurricane picture in this blog.