Dangerous Decibels Program Walk-Through: 6. How Loud is Too Loud?
Flashcard Activity
For this activity, select your flashcards in advance of teaching the course. Your Dangerous Decibels Kit has a selection of cards preprinted that work well in most instances. There is a PowerPoint file with a large assortment of additional flashcards available in the program Resources. These “slides” can be used to print and laminate additional sound sources that may be more appropriate for your audience.
It is important to pick flashcards that the students can relate to. For instance, showing a flashcard of a snowmobile to students in a school in a tropical climate would likely be irrelevant to them. And showing a flashcard of a noisy traffic sound source may be irrelevant to students in a very rural community. Ideally, pick sounds that most of the students may have had some kind of experience with.
The flashcard activity is intentionally “low tech” to give the students the hands-on experience that is critical to the inquiry-based learning approach and the success of the Dangerous Decibels program. Avoid any temptation to project the flashcards using a computer. Keep the students directly engaged with handling the flashcards.