Interactive Weather Maker
Although this assignment certainly came at a quite inconvenient time of the year, as we are trying to finish the school year, and I am buying a house and preparing for a wedding, the lesson went well all in all. I found that my students worked well with one another using the interactive website that I provided to them (http://www.scholastic.com/kids/weather/). On this website, they had the opportunity to manipulate different weather variables (i.e. temperature, relative humidity, and so on) in order to change the conditions found in a computerized environment. Using this manipulation and trial-error technique, students came up with relationships among these variables. Later in the class, they applied these relationships to the analysis of a real world case study. Using a short excerpt for weather conditions of a particular area, they provided a detailed description of the weather conditions including the characteristics that were most likely involved. They explored these deeper through answering questions (provided on the website) and following hyperlinks to research-based websites. Lastly, they brainstormed a list of ideas for future preparation measures that could be provided to people in the location that they studied.
There were three different case studies in this exercise and six groups in the class. In order to ensure that all groups were aware of the other case studies and to give groups the chance to share their analyses, one group for each case study took part in a group share exercise. During this exercise, I witnessed some very high level reasoning and questioning that showed that my students had indeed grasped the concepts desired for the class. More specifically, by the end of the class period, students were able to answer the following questions:
- How do variables such as temperature, relative humidity, wind, and pressure affect weather patterns?
- Do these variables depend on one another?
- What relationships are found among them; what happens when these relationships do not match up?
- What are the variables that cause adverse weather conditions such as hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms, and droughts?
Jordan-
ReplyDeleteYou sound really busy! If I remember correctly, aren't you taking the summer off? At least that is something to look forward to!
Wondering if your students thought of global warming as a variable causing adverse weather conditions?
mj
Hello!
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting lesson! It sounds like the students were actively engaged. I completely understand that with the end of the school year approaching that there is not enough time, but in the future if this lesson were conducted earlier in the year it would be interesting to have the students explain the weather conditions for a given day (after the lesson, of course) based on what they learned. Amy :)
Jordan,
ReplyDeleteYou are definitely busy. Kudos on getting it all done. I really liked the scholastic website and you had such a great lesson to go with it. Great job on making weather interesting!