HEART Force Drought Game
Lesson Plans
Grades6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12Earth and Space Sciences
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Provided by Center for Education Engagement and Evaluation
What it is
- In this game, students will learn about the causes of droughts, their effects on communities, and adaptation and mitigation strategies.
- Students play the role of community members and work with their teams to invest in different resilience strategies to prepare for and respond to a drought.
- The resource provides a brief video explanation of the game, a teacher guide, teacher slides, and PDFs of all game materials, including a game board, role cards, nametags, spinners, and reservoir markers.
Teaching tips
Positives
- Students will love the teamwork and practicing their communication, reasoning, and negotiation skills.
- The Teacher Guide is detailed and even includes a teacher script.
Additional Prerequisites
- This game is part of a larger HEART Force curriculum. The resource recommends that classes use this after completing the Colorado Drought Lesson for middle or high school, which is linked at the top of the resource.
- Students can play the game in one 40-60 minute class period.
- Teachers must print, cut, and assemble materials, including water reservoir level markers, role cards, role nametags, and spinners.
- Each student group will need a graduated cylinder and a pipette.
- The resource is designed specifically for Colorado, but teachers can modify it to focus on other areas that experience drought by changing the trivia questions and adjusting the community roles if necessary.
- The link for the HEART Force Community Resilience Expo Curriculum is broken. It can be found here.
Differentiation
- Teachers should group students into three teams. Large teams encourage more cooperation and compromise.
- Math classes can use this game to practice decision-making using probability and statistics.
- Science classes can focus more on the causes and effects of droughts and the possible mitigation and adaptation strategies.
- The Teacher Guide includes a list of closing reflection questions that teachers can use for individual written reflection, as a think-pair-share, or as a class discussion.
From the scientist review
This resource is an interactive game, suitable for students to learn about drought and how they could respond to extreme drought conditions in their local community. The resource has already been reviewed by CLEAN scientists and having met our science review, we recommend it for teaching.
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Hosted on ceee.colorado.edu
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