A quick, free and engaging way to help students understand flooding

In light of this weekend’s terrible flooding in the North of England, we wanted to alert you to our FREE app which has a dedicated task on flooding.

Click here to see more about the app and download it on iPads free.

This activity is aimed at 11-16 year olds; three difficulty levels mean it can be adapted to suit different levels of knowledge/ability. It is in our popular ‘mystery’ format which means it involves a story with characters as well as facts and different statements which students must take into consideration.

The case study involved is the 2004 flooding of Boscastle in Cornwall. Through the main question, ‘Why is Colin facing his worst fears?’ students learn about the causes and effects of flooding through a narrative thread.

Students sort through snippets about Colin himself, the local area and statements about the flood. They work together to explore how the event may impact Colin, other residents/visitors and of course the place itself, in different ways. They usually go through these stages:

1. Read through the statements together
2. Begin to develop ideas of possible strands to their answer, sort statements into particular groups and make any notes that come into their heads
3. Connect slips together in a wider chain to help break down the causes of flooding, the aftermath and how it can have such a huge impact on people
4. Enter a dedicated Reflection Stage as a group, with their teacher or as a whole class

To get this mystery (no sign up/registration required), please click here to go to the App Store. It is one of three tasks in Digital Mysteries: KS3/4. If you don’t have any iPads, you could download our trial for Windows or Let Us Know if you want a free PDF version which you can print off and cut out. 

Here are two screenshots from the app…