Michelle Khammavongsa

Grades 3-5

Weather

Summary:

The students will have access to pen-pals from China to talk to them about their weather knowledge and collaborate through email with their new friends through http://www.epals.com

We can initially share some classroom activities with photos, showing the weather station outside in the school garden and a picture of the students.  I want each student to have a pen pal to write to after our initial exchange.

I want my students to understand weather and how to predict the weather each day.  We will have a weather station outside in the school garden where they can figure out how much rain fell, read the thermometer and note the air pressure through an old fashion barometer.  I will teach my students about gathering data and predicting the weather with the information gathered.  Every day, we will visit the garden to gather more data.  I will talk to my students about how to predict weather using a barometer and noting whether high or low air pressure brings rain.  As a class, we will talk about clouds and how to read the different kinds of clouds in the sky and predict weather patterns.

When it is time to contact our pen pals, I would recommend that my students introduce themselves with a photo and tell their ePal about the weather that we experience in our city.

Activities:

Questions the students can ask their ePal:

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

What city do you live in?

What is the weather like today?

What time and day is it when they write?

What does their thermometer say?

Do they use Celsius or Fahrenheit?

Is it winter there as it is here?

What kinds of clothes do you wear to school?  (Like we are wearing thick winter coats, gloves, hats and scarfs.)

How do they predict what the weather is going do?

EALR 1 – Integration

1.2:  Collaborate:  Use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.

With this type of collaboration using technology, the children can start to build a trusting relationship with a child of another culture and discuss how weather affects them and exchange ideas about how to predict weather.  We can continue to use this relationship for other classroom projects and experiences.