Weather Inquiry

with Mrs. Vaage's Grade 1 A class

Early in the school year, we began noticing the rainbows created by the prisms hung in the classroom window. This led us into a long-term study on some components of weather. We have shared some of our learning experiences below. In each section, the enduring value of the learning is listed to give readers part of our vision.

Shadows and Sun

One of the factors that influence the weather is the sun. My goal was to have the children realize that the earth is in different positions relative to the sun during the day and throughout the seasons. To facilitate this outcome, we began by marking the location of the sun at the start of our day several times a year. The children have been noticing that it is in different places, but have not as yet come to the understanding that it is a result of the earth's axis and rotation.

Experiences:
1. Drawing our shadows in chalk on the tarmac early in the morning and later in the day.
2. Trying to find our shadows on cloudy days.
3. Tracking location of the sun in different months.

Questions to provoke their learning:

Why is your shadow longer now that it was this morning?
Why can't you find your shadow today?
The sun is still there, so why is there no shadow?
Why is it that the sun doesn't rise in the same spot?
Why is it so dark when we start school now?

We have also used our class globe a lot during the year as a model to try and understand where the sun is - for day and night concepts.

Experiences:
1. Hold the globe in the sunlight streaming in our window.
2. Student holding globe and walking around another student who is holding the sun.
3. Flashlight on the globe.

Questions:
Where are we right now? Day or night?
How is the earth tilted now? Are we closer to the sun or further away?
How would our position influence our weather?

Wind A key end result was that the children would become aware of the factors that affect our weather. Wind is a key factor.
	On a very windy day in the fall, we went outside, opened our arms, and let the wind blow. We felt the wind in our hair, on our faces, and we shivered. The children made connections from this to blowing on their soup or food to cool it down, and to having a fan blow in their homes on very hot days.

Temperature In the fall, the children began to notice that the temperature was dropping, that it felt colder to go outside. They needed to have warmer jackets and mittens. The enduring value was to have children become aware of the changes in temperature and how it affects our lives.
	When I asked if it might be important to track the changes in temperature, they agreed, and we prepared a Weather Graph to record our daily temperature. The children needed to research on their own to find the temperature; this was their responsibility, their learning task. Some children looked on their vehicle outside thermometer on the way to school; others listened to the radio; still others watched the morning news on TV before they came in to school.
	In addition, we adjusted our learning thermometer to match the temperature outside. Some days, there were drastic changes, and others very little change. The temperature became a topic of common interest and dialogue. The 0ºC was such an interesting concept - how can it melt and freeze at the same temperature? An unexpected learning that occurred was with the negative and positive integers. Children began to notice that when recording temperatures below zero, they always had a "-" in front, and that zero was a pivotal place for number value, and that numbers above zero are "+".
	On the coldest days, the children could not go out for recess, and the -20ºC temperature became a very important number to them. Wind chill also became a new learning because often the temperature was higher than the -20º C but with the wind chill, it made it feel colder. They remembered their earlier experience with wind...
	Our thermometer never reached -50º C, but it came close. When we read Robert Munsch's story, 50 Below Zero, we understood why their had to be so many layers of clothing, and they gasped thinking about the father outside in just his pajamas. When we heard that our scientist group on the Polar Trek had -50º C, we worried for them
	The question the children want to know is how hot it can get in Edmonton... Will it reach 50 Above Zero? good question!

Clouds We began noticing clouds when we went outside to check to see where the sun was. We also wondered about clouds when it rained. The third time we asked about clouds was when it was foggy. The enduring learning was to have children acknowledge that there are clouds in the sky almost every day, and that sometimes they will affect our weather.
	The only cloud type we learned to identify so far this year is the nimbus cloud. We practiced drawing them and predicting what might happen when we saw them in the sky - whether it would rain or snow.
You can visit our Making Rain page that we contributed to another project on Water.
We still have so much to learn about the weather: we will continue to track the temperature and then analyze our data we will study clouds in more detail we need to continue to mark the sun at 8:30 in the morning each month we need to predict rainfall and measure actual rainfall we will try to create a wind measuring device, to at least know which way the wind is blowing we will make the temperatures our own - e.g. at -35º C, the cold pinched our cheeks and we couldn't breathe in. this is for our undiscovered questions...