8. Have a unit on Five Senses of Hurricane ___. Can you smell sweat? Do you feel hot and sticky? Have each child make his own booklet.

9. Reinforce map skills as you track a hurricane. What better way to relate latitude and longitude?! Get to know those terms for your own city. Looking at map’s key, older children will be able to estimate how far away a hurricane is from a specific place.

10. Delve into causes of hurricanes. Make a list of strongest ever recorded and include their data. This will reinforce research skills and graph-making.

11. Tally how many hurricanes have occurred each year since 1960. Circle major ones. Is there a pattern?

I hope these ideas are useful and have inspired your own creative thinking.

And remember...Reading is FUNdamental!!

They are also more available to a school to a school as a local resource.

The Police have long visited schools delivering talks and demonstrations for Drugs, Personal Safety and Road Safety for pupils of Primary age.as have Fire Service who are always willing to co-operate with visits and Fire Safety presentations.

Ambulance NHS Trusts, Red Cross and St.John’s are also resources along with private Emergency Ambulance firms who are often under used by schools.

If Emergency Service presenters are sufficiently well briefed and pupils are appropriately prepared a community approach can be taken to risk by using such resources.

An excellent example of this has just been released.

The RNLI have a Youth Section at http://www.rnli.org.uk/young.asp which gives access to a wide range of resources including

All Aboard – KS 2 Resource with poster and teacher’s notes plus activities and a KS£ resource which may be of use since it covers beach visits etc called Get on Board.

The Coastguard (Maritime Coastguard Agency –MCA) and Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) have teamed up to make young people aware of dangers near water.

They have produced an interactive CDROM entitled MAYDAY for KS2 pupils. This is an extensive resource with CDROM as well as information, activity cards and teacher’s notes with ideas for follow up projects. MAYDAY is structured so that it can either be used with groups or by individuals and has a wide range of activities which ends in a “Round Britain Yacht Race.”

As well as helping in selling “risk” message and thus linking directly to Health and Safety Curriculum pack is linked to KS2 in Humanities, Environmental Studies, Literacy and Numeracy, ICT, Citizenship and PHSE.

This is a FREE resource and is divided into five sections:

1.Staying Safe – an ideal piece of pre visit instruction which helps children to recognise risks when they are near sea. This part of resource also introduces Beaufort Scale, Shipping Weather Forecasts and idea of maritime charts and maps. 2.Rescue! Uses Scenarios to encourage children to use their judgement to make risk based decisions to help other people. 3.Crew – This introduces children to people who risk their lives to help others on sea and looks at how they are trained and what motivates them. 4.Safer by Design – Children find out about PPE and wider range of safety equipment used as control measures when a calculated risk is taken by those who face “angry sea” to help save lives. This section also has some interesting Numeracy work based on speeds of helicopters and boats in rescue situations. 5.Round Britain Race – In this section children plan and take part in a race, choosing equipment, planning routes as well as choosing their team. This section supports KS2 Humanities and PHSE as well as H&S.

Further information from Liza Linscott (RNLI) 01202663217 or Julia Gosling (MCA) 020380329401 Other Resources The following organisations have produced information and which may be of interest and which can also be mostly accessed form HSE website. 1.HSE has produced resources which may be integrated directly within curriculum e.g statistics and all of their resources for use in classroom may be found at their education site at: http://www.hse.gov.uk/education/resources.htm these include HSE produced resources above and access to following.

2.ROSPA have produced a FREE set of Information sheets with notes and activities for Key Stages 1-4 on “Dangerous Substances Everywhere” and a wide range of other resources at http://www.rospa.com/education/pdfs/dangerous_substances.pdf

3.A CDROM produced by HSE for Middle and Secondary Schools identified as for use with 11 -14 Year olds might be of interest for more able Year 6s it is entitled “Human Torch” and is a “X Files” type investigation into factors surrounding a (hopefully) hypothetical case. More information may be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/education/humantorch.htm Curriculum and Lesson Planning

Other ways of involving children in safety process and them being involved revolve around actual process itself.

•Learning to identify Dangers(Hazards) and Risks(Likelihood of Danger leading an accident) •Learning to do Risk Assessments. •Reviewing existing Risk Assessments. •Writing Accident Reports. •First Aid •Learning to reduce and control risks – e.g Swimming •School Council Representation on School Safety Committee. •Inspections for monitoring and Audit •Setting School Safety Targets. •How much does an accident really cost? Could be adopted to form basis of some numeracy see.HSE Booklet in Resource The integrated approach suggested by QCA in its Guidance may suggest ways in which some of above topics be introduced via lesson planning process. Pupils will need to learn terms Risk, Hazard, Control measure as soon as possible and have a secure foundation as regards their definitions. This means that lesson plans need to reflect this and integrate safety within planning other lessons, which should be seen as opportunities. Almost any lesson or behaviour in class can be taken for identifying and highlighting dangers or hazards discussing what could happen in different circumstances and how likely these risks are to lead to an accident and what control measures need to be taken to reduce this risk.

There is no doubt that integration of safety within curriculum is a valid approach and such view of value such an approach shared by HSE, Government and “great and good”.

DfES have produced a Safety Education guidance for teachers which outlines good practice, this may be found and downloaded from:

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm?id=1314

Best advice is that school needs to adopt a “whole school approach” to Health and Safety in curriculum and it will be clearly seen that this approach is what National CUrriculum already dictates.

Dr. Paddy Swan is a qualified teacher with senior management experience in UK schools and colleges. He also has almost 25 years safety experience in industry. He has developed over 100 online and multimedia safe systems training solutions. Paddy is the author of School Basic Safety for Classroom and Support staff for UK schools and the Headteacher's Safety Management Toolkit at http://www.swaneducation.co.uk