Wonderful World of Weather
1. Students begin by talking about weather in groups answering some basic questions about that they know about weather. Some questions might include what months have the hottest temperatures, which have the lowest, is this the same all over the world, is there any difference in temperature as you get closer or farther from the poles, and is it warmer or colder as you get closer to the ocean.
2. Students in small groups of 2 or 3 are then asked to find 10 different cities on 5 different continents. Trying to get some close to the poles, far from the poles, near the ocean, in the middle of the continent, and other important places.
3. Students then go to a web site that tells the current temperatures in their cities. A coulple of these websites include: http://weather.yahoo.com/ http://www.weatherpoint.com/ http://www.intellicast.com/
4. From the same website everyday, students are asked to track the High and Low temperature, and current temperature for ten days. Students should be able to keep track of these on a grid. Like the worksheet for this assignment.
5. After they are done, students will make inferences as to what the weather is truly like in these cites. They will try to answer the questions from the beginning of the assignment in there groups.
6. Groups will then get together and design a 2-5 minute presentation on their findings. These findings should include answers to the questions from the beginning of the lessons. Where are the hottest temperatures? Etc… Groups will have to have some sort of display, on choice of media: multimedia, overhead, chalkboard, or posters.
7. Groups will present to the class using whatever process they are comfortable with.
Alternative Instruction:
· Using a modification to the chat, students could also do Sunset and Sunrise and track that over a couple of months to see how the amount of sun changes, or how northern and southern hemispheres do the opposite.