Monsoon Proof Roof Teacher’s Notes
Monsoon Proof Roof
(Age 9-11 years)
Teacher’s Notes
Primary upd8 provides relevant contexts and creative hooks for your science
lessons.
What’s it all about:
Practical Action supports families in local communities in Bangladesh to build
flood- proof homes. Severe flooding, which is likely to continue to get worse due
to climate change, has repeatedly swept their homes and, in some cases, their
land away.
Villagers work together to build raised plinths on which to construct their newly
designed homes. Wells have also been raised to avoid contamination.
New homes have jute panels for the walls which are cheap to produce and
resistant to the floods. They are held in place by treated bamboo poles.
This activity focuses on the final part of the house, the roof. Children will
investigate whether a local material, straw, is the best material to use or if a
different material would be better; something which is an issue, not just in
Bangladesh.
Children will be able to work scientifically by:

Planning different types of scientific enquiries to answer questions,
including recognising and controlling variables where necessary
Children will learn:
 To give reasons, based on fair tests, for the particular uses of everyday
materials, including metals, wood and plastic
Primary Upd8
Monsoon Proof Roof Teacher’s Notes
Resources needed
For each group items such as:
Materials to test e.g. foil from a turkey roasting
tin (as a substitute for corrugated iron), plastic
as well as ‘natural’ materials such as wood
Scissors
Rulers
Small watering can with a rose
Volume measuring equipment
Masses
Stop clock
Tray to catch water or access to outdoor area
Paper towels to dry box between tests.
Beakers/plastic tubs
Introducing the activity:
Ideas for discussion starters:
- What material are roofs in new buildings in your area made
from?
- What materials are the roofs in older buildings made from?
- Is there any link with what is locally available? (e.g. stone, slate,
clay tiles…)
Why do modern buildings use materials bought in from
elsewhere?
Why might a family change from using traditional materials
for their roof to newer materials?
Use the discussion to make connections with the global issue. When selecting
building materials, people must balance the suitability of the material’s
properties for local conditions with availability and cost of that material. For
example they may choose a locally available raw material or the material may be
sourced or manufactured elsewhere and need to be purchased at greater
expense.
Show slides 1 and 2 to introduce the problem
Slide 1 introduces Mehrab, a 9 year old boy, who lives in Bangladesh. His family
is rebuilding their home on a raised area of ground to protect it from flooding.
You may like to show the opening of the Practical Action video (see websites
below) from 0-33 seconds to give the children a visual idea of the conditions
faced by Mehrab and his family.
Primary Upd8
Monsoon Proof Roof Teacher’s Notes
Slide 2 introduces the big question – What material do you think Mehrab should
suggest his parents use for the roof of their new home? Encourage the children
to look at the photograph in detail to identify problems with the straw roof (e.g.
the holes) and to think about what buildings in Mehrab’s village are used for. In
Bangladesh animals are so valuable that they are often kept inside the house to
keep them safe, especially when there is a risk of flooding as houses are built on
raised ground.
Use slide 3 and other images of homes around the world to encourage
discussion about why different materials are chosen for roofs. Support children
to distinguish reasons to do with money and availability from scientific reasons
based on the properties of the materials. In Mehrab’s village the traditional
thatched roofs were made from natural resources that people could gather for
free.
Ideas could include:
Log cabin (roof material should help keep heat in the home, it needs to be strong
to support a heavy weight of snow and waterproof when the snow melts)
Conservatory (roof material to let in the sunlight but waterproof to keep out the
rain)
You may wish to give the children a selection of materials and ask them to sort
the materials in different ways choosing their own criteria related to properties
useful for roofs.
The children should then decide what properties are important for Mehrab’s
family using the opening video clip, the weather information for Bangladesh on
slide 4 and their own research. You may wish to print out slide 4 so that the
children can look more closely at the data.
The children should notice that Bangladesh has particularly high rainfall for part
of the year (the monsoon season). This means that roofs need to be waterproof
and also strong due to the heavy rain.
Discuss with the children (using further research as necessary) what other
properties would be helpful in making a good roof. Further research (see
websites listed below) should show that during a monsoon the wind speed
increases so roofs have to also be able to withstand strong winds. The
temperatures are very hot so homes will get very hot inside. Falling rain could
make a lot of noise on some types of roof.
The children should then plan and carry out one investigation to find out which
material is best in terms of one particular property. (Encourage each group to
investigate a different property) This may be used as an opportunity to provide
differentiation in terms of the type of data collected. An investigation into how
Primary Upd8
Monsoon Proof Roof Teacher’s Notes
waterproof a material is will produce a bar chart whereas an investigation into
how the temperature inside a house varies with different materials on the roof
could produce a line graph for each material. This would also provide the
opportunity to use data logging equipment.
Once the investigations are complete the children should share their conclusions.
Support the children in using their combined evidence to suggest and justify an
answer to the Big Question. It is important to emphasize that there is not a ‘right
answer’. The important thing is that the children can give good reasons. To do
this they will need to consider which properties are a priority for the roof to
have and which properties may be desirable but not essential.
Discuss with the children the global issue that people cannot always use the best
material for the purpose. A traditional material must be readily available, easy to
use, and be effective as roofing material in the local weather conditions. Other
types of material also need to be readily available, easy to use and effective in the
weather conditions but they must also be affordable. There may well be
advantages and disadvantages to each possible type of material.
Show Slide5: What Happened Next?
Mehrab’s family roofed their new house with corrugated iron. This is more
waterproof than the straw and is relatively cheap to buy and readily available in
Bangladesh. Mehrab’s home is now drier when it rains (although the roof is quite
noisy!). The raised platform and other design features make his family feel much
safer from flooding. For Mehrab’s family, keeping out the rain was much more
important than whether or not the roof was noisy.
Evidence of children’s thinking and learning


Primary Upd8
The variables that the children identify and
control during the investigation
The comments the children make when
discussing their results and drawing
conclusions
Monsoon Proof Roof Teacher’s Notes
Extension ideas….Cross curricular links:
This activity could be extended to consider a roof for a different part of the
world, allowing the children to design investigations for a wider range of
properties.
D and T
Create a model of a building with a roof of the chosen material - see Practical
Action’s Beat the Flood activity. Investigate different shapes of roofs and how
they are able to withstand strong winds.
Geography
Make links between local climate and traditional building styles and materials.
Maths
This activity reinforces work on means and the reading of graphs. Certain
activities allow students to practise drawing line graphs whilst others allow the
reinforcement of drawing bar charts. The different investigations use a variety of
units of measurement.
Literacy
Descriptive work based on living in different types of home or using the home as
the basis for story writing.
Science at your fingertips:
All materials have specific properties. Materials are chosen so that the properties
of the material suit the purpose it has been chosen for. If a variety of properties
are needed (e.g. strength and being waterproof) then a compromise may be
needed.
Websites:
Full details of Practical Action’s Beat the Flood project can be found here.
Resources are freely available to use plus there are examples of pupils’ work.
http://practicalaction.org/beattheflood
The video clip may be accessed via
http://practicalaction.org/beatthefloodteachers.
For weather data see:
http://www.weather-and-climate.com
Children can look up the current weather forecast for Bangladesh here:
http://www.bmd.gov.bd
Daily rainfall tables may be found by looking under ‘services’ then ‘normals’.
Primary Upd8
Monsoon Proof Roof Teacher’s Notes
Health and Safety
Please refer to the Association for Science Education publication, Be Safe! for
general advice when carrying out practical science activities.
Acknowledgments
This activity was produced by the Association for Science Education in
partnership with Practical Action as part of the Global Learning Programme
(GLP).
The GLP is a ground-breaking new programme which will create a national
network of like-minded schools, committed to equipping their students to
succeed in a globalised world by helping them to deliver effective teaching and
learning about international development and global issues at Key Stages 2 and
3.
ASE is providing the science education support for the Global Learning
Programme which is funded by the Department for International Development.
This activity can be found on the Global Learning Programme www.glp-e.org.uk,
ASE Primary upd8 www.primaryupd8.org.uk, and Practical Action Schools
www.practicalaction.org/schools websites.
Primary Upd8