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I am very interested in the weather and have been for quite a while. In middle school I would track weather and just stare at storms as they occurred. I wanted to become a meteorologist, but, like many things in life, that did not work out. One thing I definitely want to do for my students is expose them to this joy that I experienced. I know that they naturally find it interesting or, in the case of my little sister, frightening in some cases. I think it is a good idea to help children understand weather and know how to appropriately react to it. Some times is is okay to be scared of it, but most of the time there is no real reason why they should be. I would imagine that a great class activity for the students would be for them to keep a weather journal to keep all their day to day observations in. I figured many teachers have done this, but are there any of you that have done it and how successful was it? Here are some great sites that I found for weather education: http://www.education.noaa.gov/Special_Topics/Elementary_Science_Resources.php http://www.onlineschools.org/library/free-guide-to-weather-lessons/ http://beyondweather.ehe.osu.edu/

Here is a link to an NSTA collection about weather. You will find it very useful. http://learningcenter.nsta.org/my_learning_center/my_library.aspx?cid=HqMqduMpcPo_E Thanks for sharing your weather resources.

I think that teaching my 1st grade students about weather would be very interesting and fun! I teach on a military base and my students have lived in many places around the world. A lot of my students love to talk about where they used to live. Some of the students that have recently moved to Hawaii inquire about local weather patterns as compared to other places that have lived. For example, they ask why it only rains for a short period of time and then becomes sunny again. I tell them that Hawaii is an island and we experience tropical weather which is different from what many of the students are used to. To help the students learn more about weather I would like the students to interview their parents to help them gather information about what types of weather they have experienced throughout their life and how that compares to the weather in Hawaii.

For me, I used to struggle with teaching weather to my 8th graders because I couldn't think of a lab/inquiry beyond recording the weather conditions for a month. So I posed this question at an inquiry training, 5 years ago, and someone suggested using weather data from Weather Underground and well, now I love teaching weather and students have told me it is one of the most meaningful 'labs' they've have ever done. I've attached a copy of the first lab report (done in one period)that we did/do as a class (guided practice). Once students see how to use the site to collect data, they then ask their own weather questions and design their own experiments. One thing, I hear each year is that students wish they had done something like this earlier when they were elementary because, like me, they thought of inquiry as always having to be a hands-on type of experiment. Being able to use a data base, they were able to analyze years worth of data and come to conclusions as one student said, 'A lot more important, than which brand of battery lasts the longest...This is like real science.'

Attachments

t.boothlab.doc (0.05 Mb)

Another great resource is GLOBE located at globe.gov. It has weather data submitted by students from around the world. It is free to any teacher, even if your are not a GLOBE certified teacher. You can use their data, but cannot enter any unless you are a GLOBE teacher.

Kristen, I've actually done this activity for at least the last ten years. My kindergarten students track the daily weather for at about three months. They draw pictures to depict the weather of the day. To make the activity more meaningful students also label the season, the month, days of the week and date on their individual calendars. At the end of the month we tally the number of days for each type of weather. We then see how the weather patterns may change as the seasons change. At the beginning of the activity the students have some difficulty however they learn quickly and are able to track the weather independently within a few weeks.

Thanks for the input guys! I am really excited to teach weather in my future elementary school classrooms and this really helps me get a head start!

Thanks for posting the lab report interesting. I have my 6th grade students keep a weather log for several weeks, the first week or two we have them use the tools to measure the weather factors. The is a cloud wheel I used this year to get them looking at the clouds for other observations. In your elementry class you may be able to do it for longer. Also you might want them depending on the grade look at weather folk lore, There's a lot of silliness connected with weather. It would be fun I tried it several times with my sixth graders.