Mapping the Weather

By Michelle McDonald

Content Area: Science–Weather

Grade and Language Level: 5th grade–Intermediate

Rationale: The purpose of this lesson is to familarize students with weather patterns through out the United States, using information downloaded from an Internet site, and use that information to create a weather map.

Objectives:
Learners will be able to…
1. identify weather patterns
2. access information from the Internet
3. create a map using that information

Materials:
The National Weather Summary
A large blow up map of the United States

Procedure:

Preview: Before the lesson, basic deirections (North, South, East, West) and the location of the 50 states should be reviewed. How the states are divided in to regions may also need to be reviewed. Students will need to know weather vocabulary–rain, snow, sleet, calm, wind, etc.

Present:
1. Instruct the student on how to download information from the Internet.
2. Break the students into cooperative learning groups.
3. Assign each group a portion of the National Weather Summary to use in creating the weather map. This could be done by state, region, etc.
4. On a large map of the United States have the students draw the kind of weather that is occuring in each state or region mentioned in the Nation Weather Summary.

Review:
After the completion of the map students will present their map and explain what the weather pattern is for that state or region.

Follow-up: After this particular activty students could download the National Weather Summary for a specific number of days and then try to predict what the weather will be for the following week.

Caveats and Options: The activity could be done on an individual scale. The students could also be assigned a specific state and use the internet to research weather information about that state. They could then use that information to make a weather map for that state.