Weather

Standards and Benchmarks:

Content Standard: K-4 Earth and Space Science
Content Standard: D-Changes in Earth and Sky

Benchmark: Weather changes from day to day and over the seasons

Learning Goals:

Students will understand that the underlying element of higher temperatures is the increase in directness of the sun's rays based on geographic location.

Formative Assessment:

The results of this formative assessment show that most of the students already know that there are several factors associated with high temperatures--they answered that two or more of the weather conditions would be present. The next most popular answer was that it would be sunny, which makes a lot of sense. Most students have a lifetime of personal experience telling them that when it's sunnier, it gets hotter.  The next most popular answer was that it would be humid. Some of the students also may have used personal experience to know that humidity can be associated with higher temperatures. The least popular answer was that there would be no wind, but from this, we see that some students have made this general association as well. I think students struggled with this formative assessment because they didn't understand the difference between causation and correlation. The three factors do not cause higher temperatures; they are simply often correlated with higher temperatures. When someone says that it's 90 degrees, one can make assumptions about the weather conditions, but weather is too complex for 100 percent confidence in those assumptions.

Learning Performance:

The question we are trying to answer as a class is "How are high temperatures created?" (The how question is evidence of an engaging activity). I will ask the class again what they think causes high temperatures in case there are other answers besides those offered in the probe. Based on their answers, students will be put into different groups according to what each student thinks (unless groups need to be rearranged based on ability level or the need to even out numbers). Each group will collect data about weather patterns in 5 or 6 different cities (which the class will decide on in order to have a good survey of all areas of the U.S.). These observations will lead us to a fuller picture of America's weather. Each day for about 1 school week, the students will split into their groups and go to the computer lab to visit www.weather.com. Here, they will record their group's variable and temperature in each city. (This is the evidence collection portion of the 5 step inquiry.) The data will be from approximately the same time in each location since everyone will be accessing the computers together. Directly after this, we will also take the temperature and measure the variables for our own area as a class by stepping outside. If some variables can't be physically assessed by the class, we can check those on www.weather.com as well. (If possible, the students could also have a correspondence with students from a different state to see what the data is like where  they live). The students will record their data, and the class will create charts so the data can be compared and some ideas can be formed. (Here is where the students will be explaining their evidence). After some tentative conclusions have been developed, it would be really interesting to have a weather man come into the classroom to discuss weather patterns in different parts of the United States. Along with this, students can look to other sources (books, Internet, etc.) to evaluate their explanations. Finally, the students could communicate their knowledge by giving a weather report to the school during the morning announcements. They could explain their learning about how high temperatures are created during this weather report. In order to make sure students achieve the original learning goal, I will scaffold them along the way to see that the differences between location of the cities plays a major role in temperature.