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I am doing a unit for 4th Grade Science on weather. I have covered the water cycle and cloud formations so far. I'd like to incorporate an inquiry activity. Does anyone have any suggestions for my next lesson?
Thanks!
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You could have your students conduct internet research on landforms and the effect on weather and climate.
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As you move into your discussion about forecasting the weather your students could do inquiry activities on temperature, air pressure, humidity etc. Air pressure can be a good topic for an inquiry activity. Your students could build simple barometers and then use them to explore the relationship air pressure has on weather patterns.
If you have constraints relative to the building of the barometers, you can of course find some relatively cheap ones for use or you can invite your class parents to contribute to the purchase of a few. Either way, your students' use of weather instruments like a barometer, thermometer, etc. are a great way for them to explore how humidity, air pressure, temperature, etc. interact to influence weather.
Here's a link to one of the resources that I used,
http://www.gowildnewyorkcity.com/teachers/lesson_air.pdf
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A great inquiry activity we just did in my college science methods class is exploring density of water and other objects. We placed soap in a beaker of water and observed what happened. It is a great way to discuss size and shape in terms of density and the density of water being 1.
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We just conducted an experiment on density by placing two cans of soda into water to see which will float. One can was regular cola and the other was a diet cola. It was fascinating to find out which will sink and which will float.
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What I do with my four graders is to observe the sky outdoors, with a quadrat formed with both hands; this is an excellent opportunity to refresh fractions, since the quadrat has to be divided in six frames. The idea is to go outdoors, observe the sky and report the fraction that is overcasted. The second part of the activity is to describe the major visible clouds. There is an excellent video as well, in www.pbslearningmedia.org regarding metheorology. A NOAA expert explain kids our ages the usage of the different instruments.
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Hi Alison,
One excellent education website is ReadWorks.org which focuses on reading comprehension. Also, www.education.jlab.org (Jefferson Laboratory)is a good site for science questions/answers, and it has a kid's zone with interactive science games. I hope that these sites are found to be useful.
Deborah
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