Hello everyone, this is my 26th year teaching-22 years in Middle school science & now in my 4th year as the K-5 science teacher. This year I created a unit for 3rd grade for Weather & Climate. We are not at full adoption of NGSS in NYS yet; however, I've been aligning my curriculum to it for the last 4 years and decided to try to jump in this year so that I can make changes as needed before full implementation. I'm less than thrilled with the unit I created for Weather & Climate for my 3rd graders. It's not very hands on for the students and I need to redesign what I taught. Most of my other units in all K-5 classes I use Carolina kits, or Engineering is Elementary. I've also looked at and used some TpT ideas as well. The lessons for my other units are very inquiry based and student driven. I'm hoping anyone here might have suggestions for lessons/unit ideas for Weather and Climate for 3rd grade to guide me in a better direction as I rewrite this unit for next year. Thank you in advance for any help you can give. Christine Walsh K-5 Science teacher Berlin Elementary
Can I asked what you had them do to see if I can think of something different?
Students kept track of outdoor temperature & created a bar graph of temperature-we discussed what the graph tells us in terms of how we could use it to predict the next week's temperature. They also kept track of cloud cover & precipitation & wind speed. We didn't graph those. We used Brainpop & BrainpopJr. for background information on weather, natural disasters, seasons & climates--(not all back to back) We modeled tilt of Earth & rotation/revolution to explain change of seasons: They listened to Vivaldi's Four Seasons while they drew/colored pictures for each season of what plants & animals look like or things they do and what types of activities/holidays people are involved with during each season. Natural disasters we had great class discussions regarding what they should do to stay safe. I'm thinking next year of expanding that to having them safety posters for different disasters. We did some cloud observations--a bit challenging to do in upstate NY during February. I'm really looking for more hands on types activities that will help them have a better understanding of these topics. I see my classes 4 days/week for 4 weeks for about 30 minutes each time they come. Thank you for taking the time to think about this too. I appreciate it.
Four weeks is long enough for children to carry out a beginning study of phenology, depending on the seasonal changes happening in your area. https://www.usanpn.org/natures_notebook Making these kinds of observations would align well with the other observations they are making.
Thank you. I"m looking forward to learning more about this. I appreciate your time.
I am a student teacher and I was thinking of doing climate/weather for a lesson the same way. I am needing to do this for my science college class and I am second guessing my choice. Does anyone have any better suggestions. I need to follow a 5E lesson plan. I am teaching 3rd grade. Adrene Henninger
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