New
New
Year 3

Flooding rivers

You can identify some causes and impacts of flooding and give recent examples.

New
New
Year 3

Flooding rivers

You can identify some causes and impacts of flooding and give recent examples.

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Rivers flood when they can’t hold all the water that is entering into them from tributaries, the soil and the rock.
  2. Heavy rainfall or long-lasting rainfall is a common cause of flooding.
  3. Steep slopes can cause flooding as rainwater will run quickly downhill to the river during a storm.
  4. Humans can make flooding more likely by deforestation and building tarmac and concrete surfaces.

Keywords

  • Banks - The sides of a river are called its banks.

  • Drainage basin - A drainage basin is the area drained by a river and its tributaries.

  • Deforestation - Deforestation is where trees are chopped down by humans.

Common misconception

River flooding is only influenced by natural factors like the amount of rainfall.

Humans can make flooding more likely by building towns and cities and deforestation.

Take the class into the playground to test whether water will soak into different surfaces. Try this with soil, grass and tarmac, and then relate this to how humans can cause flooding.
Teacher tip

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2024), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

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6 Questions

Q1.
Which direction does a river flow?
Correct answer: downstream
upstream
mainstream
Q2.
Which of these statements describe the river in the image?
An image in a quiz
Correct answer: found in the upper course
Correct answer: slow flowing
Correct answer: narrow shallow channel
lots of erosion
Q3.
Which of these is a landform in the upper course?
Correct answer: waterfall
floodplain
meander
Q4.
Where would you find an estuary?
Where two rivers meet
Correct answer: Where river meets the sea
Where the river starts
Q5.
Bouncing, floating, rolling and dissolved are all ways the river does what?
erodes
Correct answer: transports
deposits
Q6.
What do we call the path a river takes from its source at the start to its mouth at the end? Unscramble the letters to find the answer.
1 - C
2 - O
3 - U
4 - R
5 - S
6 - E

6 Questions

Q1.
How does rainwater enter a river?
Correct answer: through the rocks
Correct answer: tributaries
Correct answer: through the soil
through a hosepipe
Q2.
A river floods when water rises over its...
Correct answer: banks
beds
mouth
Q3.
Are these human or natural causes of flooding?
Correct Answer:heavy rainfall,natural

natural

Correct Answer:steep slopes,natural

natural

Correct Answer:building towns,human

human

Correct Answer:deforestation,human

human

Q4.
How do trees help reduce the risk of flooding?
Correct answer: they absorb water
they release water
they block the flow of water in the river
Q5.
Towns and cities have grown , and this increases the risk of flooding.
Correct Answer: larger, bigger, big, large
Q6.
What type of surfaces increase the risk of flooding?
grass
soil
Correct answer: concrete
Correct answer: tarmac