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.
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Lesson details
Key learning points
- Rivers flood when they can’t hold all the water that is entering into them from tributaries, the soil and the rock.
- Heavy rainfall or long-lasting rainfall is a common cause of flooding.
- Steep slopes can cause flooding as rainwater will run quickly downhill to the river during a storm.
- 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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Starter quiz
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6 Questions
Q1.
Which direction does a river flow?
upstream
mainstream
Q2.
Which of these statements describe the river in the image?
lots of erosion
Q3.
Which of these is a landform in the upper course?
floodplain
meander
Q4.
Where would you find an estuary?
Where two rivers meet
Where the river starts
Q5.
Bouncing, floating, rolling and dissolved are all ways the river does what?
erodes
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.
Exit quiz
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6 Questions
Q1.
How does rainwater enter a river?
through a hosepipe
Q2.
A river floods when water rises over its...
beds
mouth
Q3.
Are these human or natural causes of flooding?
natural
natural
human
human
Q4.
How do trees help reduce the risk of flooding?
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.
Q6.
What type of surfaces increase the risk of flooding?
grass
soil