Tropical Storms in Year 8
Learn how tropical storms are formed with Year 8 students…
In Year 8 Geography, students have been learning about tropical storms – a timely topic as many storms have been developing around the world from Southeast Asia to the Caribbean and beyond. This unit aims to drive students’ interest in and ‘sense of wonder’ about tropical storms by looking at the different geographical locations of such weather phenomena, their characteristics and their formation.
Students produced the cross-section of a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean as a pop-up in their notebooks, providing a fully annotated example to reference. Students also took time to explain the visible features using Geographical terminology, a practical exercise in describing tropical storms with subject-area expertise and accuracy. Year 8 is working on developing their ‘geographical imagination’ of places at a variety of scales, to be exemplified by real-world tropical storms including Hurricane Katrina and the 1991 Bangladesh Cyclone, in addition to disaster response and management. As this unit progresses, students are provided the opportunity to explore physical patterns and processes in detail, which are essential in understanding the links between people and the planet.
