"What's the Weather Over There?"

Objective:
What the students will be able to do upon completion of the lesson.

Materials needed:
· Colored construction paper
· Thumbtacks and/or staples
· Map of the World drawn on butcher paper
· Scissors

Anticipatory Set:
Relate lesson to everyday life or situation students may encounter. Begin by showing the pictures the bar-coded pictures listed at the end of this lesson plan. As you show each picture prompt the connection with weather by asking: Do you think it is cold or hot where the person lives? What makes you think so? Remind the children of prior lessons in which you have talked about different countries and cultures. As you show each picture ask if they think the people live in the United States and, why or why not. Other questions that can be asked are: Do you know what the weather is like in other parts of the world? What are some different types of weather? Do you have family or friends that live far away? Where do they live, and what kind of weather do they have?"

Delivering Instruction/Model and Lead

Procedures:

The teacher will:
1. The teacher will place a large map of the world drawn on with some major cities in various countries highlighted on a bulletin board. The teacher should have labeled at least as many cities on this map as there are students in the class. The cities should be distributed throughout the world as evenly as possible. In addition, the teacher may ask for various student volunteers to mark on the map such features as: oceans, mountains, deserts, etc. Assign each student a city and have the students locate their city. The teacher should hand out an information sheet to each student that lists information about each city such as average rain, snow, winds, and temperature. Each student should identify his or her city on the sheet, and put a circle around it. The teacher should then give each student small squares (1.5in x 1.5in) of yellow, green, red, and blue construction paper. The students should then be instructed to: write the number representing the average amount of rain and the word "rain" from the information sheet on the yellow square, write the number representing average amount of snowfall and "snow" on the green square, write the number representing the average temperature and "temperature" on the red square, write the number representing average winds and "wind" on the blue square. Next talk about the different weather facts beginning with rainfall. Randomly select several of the cities and ask whoever is assigned the city to report the data. Write the numbers that are reported on the board. Then ask the class if the numbers are different or the same. Use this to point out that different areas of the world have different weather. After the discussion for each weather fact, have the students attach the appropriate data square to their city.

Guided Practice/Lead and Test

Checking for understanding (recognition to recall)

2. Once the data squares are attached to the map, ask the group questions such as: If you wanted to go snow sledding, what cities might be good to visit? Where would be a good place to hang clothes to dry? If you liked using your umbrella a lot, where should you live? If you liked sunny and warm days, where would be a good place to go? Where would be a good place to fly a kite? If you loved to swim in the ocean, where would be a good place to live?

Independent Practice
3. Let the students use their fact sheet to complete a teacher-made worksheet which will ask questions about the different cities. Sample Questions:What is the temperature in London, England?What city gets the most rainfall?Which is the colder city, Anchorage, Alaska or Moscow, Russia?

Extension activity:

4. The students can pick one of the cities and write a report on how their lives are affected by the weather trends of their region. (Students will need to have access to the library/internet for research.

Formative Evaluation

Evaluation:

The teacher will check correct and incorrect oral responses in the group activity. The teacher will check for the number of correct answers of the 10 items in the independent worksheet.

Criteria:

80% Mastery. The student will have 8 of the 10 items on the teacher-made worksheet correct.

Download Barcodes for this lesson

Return to annotations