Are You In Need of Some Idea Starters?

Review the ideas below and adapt them for your classroom or community, or use them to develop your own ideas. Be sure to tell us your Ideas that Worked so that we know how YOU helped to get your students and community ready for emergencies.

• Create "Ready" Kits for the Community: As a community service project, have your students work together to assemble Ready-to-Go and Ready-to-Stay kits that can be donated to people in the community who may be in need of the supplies. Review the components of the kits as a class, and then host a fundraiser and use the proceeds to purchase the items needed for the kits. Or if possible, ask students and their families to donate these items as part of the project. This could be a school-wide project. Once the kits are assembled, contact your local fire department, emergency management office, or American Red Cross Chapter so they can help you deliver the kits to people who may need them.

• Families Getting Ready: Host a family event and invite members of the community to speak to families about possible natural disasters that may affect your area, and provide additional tips on how families can prepare themselves for such things. Have your students create flyers to announce the event and program schedules to describe the guest speakers.

• We're Ready: To help motivate students and families to prepare their kits and to develop communication plans, create a large bar graph for the cafeteria, library, or hallway. The name of each teacher in the school should appear on the horizontal axis. The vertical axis will count the students. Provide all the teachers in your school with copies of the Get Ready with Freddie! reproducible pages to send home. In addition, create a template for each family with check-off boxes and lines for the student and parent signatures.
  
  The check-off list could be as simple as:
  o My family discussed emergency preparedness.
  o My family created a communication plan.
  o My family created (or started to organize) a Ready-to-Go kit.
  o My family created (or started to organize) a Ready-to-Stay kit.
  When a student brings the paper back to school checked off and signed, he/she gets to add his/her name to the bar graph above his/her teacher name. The goal is to get every name on the graph. If requesting families to complete both kits and the communication plan may be too difficult, start with asking them to complete their communication plans.