Creating an “Ideal” Fire Adapted
Community/Neighborhood
Middle School (6-8) Social Studies
Length of
Lesson: 2-4 (55 minute periods) days (depends on student’s effort)
Objectives:
·
Students will learn about mitigation and its
effect on the spread of home fires.
·
Students will learn mitigation practices or
standards.
·
Students will learn what a fire adapted
community/neighborhood is.
·
Students will construct an “Ideal” fire adapted
community/neighborhood.
Standards:
CO History
Standard 1: The key concepts of continuity and change, cause and effect,
complexity, unity and diversity over time; The complex interrelationship
between the past and the present is evident when solving issues over time. For
example, human interaction with the environment has been a critical issue
throughout history and continues to be a factor in pollution, climate change,
and resource management.
Background:
As fires in the wildland urban interface become more of a
part of everyday life, we must find new ways to adapt to life where the homes
meet the forest. Write the word mitigation on the board.
Have students think about the word. See if any of them know what the
word means. Tell them that in this
lesson, they will be learning about mitigation and fire adapted
communities. Let them know that
the ticket out the door at the end of the day is the definition of mitigation
written down on a slip of paper. (once they learn more throughout the first or
even second day) Inform the class that near the end of the full lesson, they
will be constructing an “Ideal” fire adapted community.
ü
At some point in this lesson (probably the first
day), it is important to see that students have a good grasp on the vocabulary
needed for this lesson. Discuss
and define the following words: WUI-(Wildland Urban Interface), fuel, evacuation, homeowners,
defensible space, and combustibles.
Use the website: http://fireadapted.org
for help with this lesson. The
article (findings) is called Lessons Learned from Waldo Canyon: Fire Adapted
Communities
Start by giving the students some background on the Waldo
Canyon Fire. Ask students if
anyone remembers hearing about it.
Read a short summary on the fire using information from page 4 of the Lessons
Learned from Waldo Canyon: Fire Adapted Communities. You can pick and choose what you want
to tell students. They just need a
little bit of background knowledge about this fire.
Lesson:
Use the website listed above. Project the very first picture onto the board. Have students take a few minutes to
look at the burn area, the houses still standing and the houses that
burned. Ask them to take note of
anything they find interesting or have questions about. Spend about five or ten minutes discussing
the things the students noticed or had questions about. Make sure to draw attention to the two
homes at the bottom right of the screen.
Take note of how the fire burns right up to the grass line but doesn’t
go any further. All in all, those
last two homes seem to have good defensible space. If students don’t pick up on
this, point it out.
Discuss what mitigation is and how it doesn’t always stop
the spread of fire, or save every home but it can help to save homes. Don’t give out too much information
because students will be researching this topic. Just give a broad definition and a couple of examples of
what is done to change a home to be more firewise.
Using the handout Lessons Learned from Waldo Canyon: Fire
Adapted Communities page 4, list some of the elements of a fire adapted
community. Discuss these with the
students.
On the board write risks that increase homes catching on
fire. Go through the rest of the report Lessons Learned from Waldo
Canyon: Fire Adapted Communities, and project the pictures of the damage
some of the homes received in the fire.
Have students think about things on a home or around a home that would
increase the chances of it catching on fire during a fire. As they name things, add them to the
list.
Example: decks,
woodpiles near or against home, trees near house, wood shingles, bark mulch,
wood siding, wood fences, wooden doors/garage doors…etc.
Take class to computer lab. (students can partner up if you
would like) Have them look up fire mitigation strategies for homeowners. They can also look up the definition
for mitigation if they want to.
The goal here is to have them learn as many mitigation strategies as
possible. They will need them later when they are building their own fire
adapted community. Students need
to make a list of all the mitigation strategies for homeowners they find. They might not be able to find them all
on this first day. If not, they
can use more time the second day to finish up. Once everyone has a fairly
complete list, gather the class together to list and discuss these strategies
as a group. Also discuss why they
think these suggestions/strategies may or may not work. It would also be a good
idea to discuss materials that a house can be built with to improve its fire resistance.
Assignment - (one
or two days to complete)
This
assignment works best if students are in groups or with a partner.
Tell
students that they will be creating the “ideal fire adapted community (or
neighborhood). They can create
this community or neighborhood by using clay and other materials (a model) or
by a drawing. Instruct them to
include the elements/strategies they learned in their computer research in
these models or drawings. (demonstration
of learning J)
Presentation-
After the
models or drawings are complete, have the groups present them to the
class. Have group explain what
they did and why. Encourage other students to ask groups questions.
Extension-
Obviously
you can take this as far as you want to go. You can talk about the economic impact that mitigation has
on current homeowners, creation of community organizations to enforce
mitigation, etc.
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