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Core Earth Systems Final
Core Earth Systems Final
Core Earth Systems Final
the temperature increased or decreased. This activity allowed the students to make
scientific predictions and then go back to find results and analyze/make sense of
what they discovered.
Secondly, we will discuss what a tornado is by asking the following questions: "Do
you know what a tornado is? Do you know where tornadoes normally occur? How
would stay safe during a tornado? Do you know the difference between a tornado
watch and a tornado warning? What happens outside during a tornado?"
Furthermore, we discussed how a tornado is a part of the earth system and weather
creates the conditions for a tornado to happen. We discussed how tornadoes
happen on land and in the US, while hurricanes happen in the ocean. Leading from
this question we made a final point to explain how different regions of the world
have different climates.
We also read about tornadoes from a book entitled "I Wonder Why The Wind
Blows," to help us explain what a tornado is in further detail. We used this as a way
to probe the students about their thoughts and knowledge of tornadoes. This trade
book also allowed the students to see pictures and visuals of tornadoes so that they
have something to connect the new information with. We connected these thought
in an activity where the students got to simulate a tornado using 2, 2 liter plastic
bottles full of water and glitter. The glitter represented the debris a tornado carries;
having this glitter in the bottle helped us to further explain how a tornado picks up
everything in it's path.
Next, we played a game of bingo! Before started this game we went over the
definitions of the following terms: thermometer, cloud thunderstorm, lightning,
snow, cloud, sun, temperature, forecast, meteorologist, weather, climate, front, rain
gauge, and wind. We had a large poster board with all of the terms and graphics
which allowed the students to connect the terms with a picture in their mind. After
going over these terms we gave each student an individual bingo board and called
out the definitions one by one. When the students heard the definition for a word on
their board they covered it with a piece of paper. Before beginning the game we
made sure to clarify that all of the student understand that they had to cover four in
a row, column, or diagonally. This bingo game allowed us to formally assess the
students' knowledge and understanding of weather and climate.
The last activity we did allowed the students to look on an iPad weather app at cities
from all over the world. We purposely bookmarked cities in the north, south, east,
and west so that he temperatures and climates differed. This lead us to ask the
students questions such as Do you know where this is located? What is the
temperature there? What time is it there? What does it feel like outside? What does
the weather forecast for Sunday look like? etc. This activity was very discussion
oriented with the aid of technology. We were even able to allow the students to look
up additional locations with the extra time we had at the end of the lesson.
In what ways would you
assess students
understanding or
confusion?
Bingo will help us assess what the students understand because we will ask them
question through out the game. Moreover, This will be a formal assessment because
the kids will need to know the definitions of the terms we discussed in order to know
if they won the bingo game or not.
Throughout the entire lesson we kept up a conversation and a discussion based
environment that allowed us to constantly monitor the students understandings
and confusions so we could address them right away. We believe that this idea of
using formative assessment throughout the lesson allowed us to better gauge the
students understanding and therefore we were able to teach them in a more
effective way.
7. What materials/
equipment are needed to
teach the lesson?
- A thermometer
- red marker or crayon
- worksheet
- 2 2-liter bottles
- water
- duct tape
- poster board or paper (chips for the bingo game)
- bingo sheets
- iPads for the weather app
Weather Wizkids
Pinterest
I Wonder Why the Wind Blows Trade book