How Avalanche Fences Hold Snow in Place, Read and Answer

Ask your child which hazards can happen where you live before you start. After each passage, talk about what the solution protects and when it might fail, as the levee and stilt house page does. Check each page with the answer key.

Read how steel avalanche fences and tree trunks pin snow to a slope and why ski patrols dig snow pits. A slab is a wide, flat, thick piece of something, such as snow. The directions on the page read: Read the passage. Then, turn the page and answer the questions. On page 2: Circle the letter of the best answer for questions 1 to 3, and write the answers to questions 4 to 6 on the lines. The answer key covers the questions on page 2.

Yes, both. We made it for 4th Grade Earth's surface, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens with natural hazards. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

A natural hazard is a natural event like an earthquake, flood, landslide, tsunami, avalanche or volcanic eruption that can harm people and property. People cannot stop these events, but engineers design ways to reduce the harm (4-ESS3-2).

For earthquakes, they use steel frames that bend, cross braces and rubber base isolators, so buildings sway instead of falling. For floods, they build levees of packed earth, stack sandbags and raise houses on stilts. One sheet has children sort these fixes by hazard.

Sea floor sensors and buoys send data by satellite to a tsunami warning center, which sends alerts to sirens and phones along the coast. At volcanoes, scientists watch for tiny earthquakes, a swelling bulge and more gas. In 1980 these signs at Mount St. Helens let officials close the area before it erupted.

Yes. All 10 natural hazards sheets have an answer key, with sample answers for the questions children answer in their own words and the other answers to accept.