Building an earthquake-ready future

What happens to communities after an earthquake? What steps do they need to take? Are there things we could do now to help protect them in the future?

Te Papa and EQC have published a resource, Building an earthquake-ready future, aimed at curriculum levels 2–5 covering science, social studies and literacy.

The resource supports teachers to provide students opportunities to explore the effects of earthquakes on a community and use the design process to come up with prototypes that will help solve some of the problems they face both physically and socially. The resource is structured into two different levels so that the content is audience appropriate and really focuses on finding solutions in a positive way. Students feel they are contributing to something and building a better future.

Students begin by exploring different media that show some of the effects of earthquakes on a community. This can be damage that happens to buildings and why, as well as some of the social effects such as a decrease in wellbeing and population decrease. They will then choose a problem to focus on and brainstorm all the different solutions they can think of to fix, mitigate and even eradicate the problem. Students will then pick what they feel is the most viable option and prototype and test this. The results can then be presented back to the class for feedback and next steps.

Design thinking approach

The resource follows the Stanford design thinking model, allowing students and teachers to explore project-based learning and design thinking in their classroom. This is a great way to introduce enquiry learning to the classroom or to build on it if students are already familiar. The structure can also be applied to multiple different topics so teachers may take this resource and continue to apply it once the unit has finished.