Lots of medics and emergency workers are helping people in Indonesia after a large earthquake happened there on Friday.
It was a 7.5-magnitude earthquake. (That is how earthquakes are measured in terms of how bad they are. Seven point five is very big.)
The earthquake also caused a tsunami. That is a massive wave of water. When an earthquake happens on or near a large body of water, it can cause huge waves and flowing water that does a lot of damage. The earthquake in Indonesia was along the coast, near a city called Palu, which is on a bay.
Many people helped those who were affected by the disaster.
The country’s search and rescue team brought in huge machines to help dig through rubble to find and rescue people.
The Red Cross is a helping agency. They went to Indonesia and helped to care for people who were affected by the tragedy.
The country’s military also helped.
Many buildings, such as police stations, were turned into hospitals to care for the victims.
It is estimated that 2.4 million people were affected by the earthquake.
Indonesia will likely spend the next months and perhaps even years, fixing the damage that was caused. Countries around the world are sending money to help them recover.
The Story Behind the Story: Discussing Challenging Topics
(Note: This SBTS was re-recorded Monday a.m. to reflect the breaking news about the NAFTA talks.)
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
By Jonathan Tilly
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Do nations have an obligation/duty to assist other nations in times of crisis? Why do you think so?
Reading Prompt: Text Patterns
How does the organization of the article help you to understand its meaning?
Junior
Identify a variety of organizational patterns in a range of texts and explain how they help readers understand the texts (OME, Reading: 2.2).
Intermediate
Analyse increasingly complex texts to identify organizational patterns used in them and explain how the patterns help communicate meaning (OME, Reading: 2.2).
Language Feature: Parenthetical Period ( . )
Parentheses are often used to tell a reader an additional piece of information. However, sometimes a writer will tell a whole sentence in parentheses. Look at the example from today’s story,
(That is how earthquakes are measured in terms of how bad they are. Seven point five is very big.)
This example is especially unique because two sentences are contained within the parentheses! You definitely don’t see that everyday… But it also highlights an important piece of punctuation–unlike when parentheses are used as part of a sentence–if an entire sentence is within parentheses, the final period goes inside the right parenthesis.
