Disaster Resilience Education Tasmania (DRET) unit success criteria
By the end of this unit students and teachers should:
- know what being disaster resilient means for individuals and communities,
- identify local natural hazards,
- begin to understand key concepts of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery,
- understand how preparation, planning and emergency drills can help people to respond more safely in an emergency, and
- know where to find information and advice to help plan and prepare for floods, storms and bushfires.
What is disaster resilience?
Disaster resilient individuals and communities understand their local hazards. They take action at home and in the community to reduce hazard impacts and prevent hazards from becoming disasters. They follow safety advice and warnings and respond safely during an emergency. After an emergency, they support each other to recover.
Hazards such as storms, floods and bushfires can have enormous social, economic and environmental impacts. With climate change, we are likely to see more frequent and intense hazard events. Building disaster resilient communities has never been more important.
What is disaster resilience education?
Disaster resilience education provides children and young people with the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to help build resilience in their homes, schools and communities.
Children and young people are frequently overlooked when it comes to disaster resilience, but research shows that if they are provided with the necessary guidance and support, they can increase their own safety and the safety of others.
Will teaching my students about disaster resilience cause them fear or anxiety?
Learning about disaster resilience can actually reduce student fears. However, if you know of a student who has experienced a traumatic event in the past, you should follow necessary procedures to ensure that the welfare of this student is carefully considered.
DRET Unit Australian Curriculum Links
The five lessons of the DRET unit cover the Australian Curriculum (V9) learning areas for students, Year 5 to Year 8, in Humanities and Social Sciences, Digital Technologies, Science and Health; general capabilities of Literacy and Personal and Social Capability; and cross curriculum priority of Sustainability.
Detailed information on the DRET unit and links to Version 9 of the Australian Curriculum.
Scope and sequence
This DRET scope and sequence document provides the curriculum learning links, the order of the five lessons along with the learning intentions, concepts, assessment tasks/activities and helpful resource links.
Helpful resources
- Tasmania Fire Service Bushfire Safety Guide provides in-depth information about bushfire planning and preparedness. The guide features a plan template that can be printed. The 5 Minute Bushfire Plan can be completed online.
- Bushfire Ready Schools provides bushfire emergency planning guidelines and templates for schools.
- Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods provides resources and links for community lead bushfire preparedness.
- Bushfire-Ready Challenge | Bushfire: Why risk it? is an immersive bushfire preparedness experience available to all Tasmanians.
- School Fire Education provides a range of resources and links for home fire safety and other related fire safety topics.
- TasALERT provides a range of Get Ready resources and information.
- Tasmania State Emergency Service provides information on flood and storm.
- Tasmanian State Natural Disaster Risk Assessment (TSNDRA) examines the state level risks associated with hazards.
- Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge Hub provides statistics and information, photos, video and media about past disaster events.
- Australian Disaster Resilience education for young people provides disaster resilience curriculum mapping.
- The Comprehensive School Safety Framework is an international guide for disaster resilience education, safe learning facilities and school emergency management planning.
- The National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework.
- Australia’s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience.
- Australian Red Cross has a resource on how to talk to children about emergencies.
- Emerging Minds has a Community Trauma Toolkit resource for parents and educators.
- Disaster Risk Reduction terminology.
- School Recovery Toolkit.