Newspaper, a Yardstick, and Some Fun

Last week in class we continued with our Weather unit. For years we have been doing a demonstration with the students about air pressure, using a yardstick and a newspaper. The class always loves this demonstration and causes a great deal of discussion as to why this happens using these materials. I found this video, from what appears to be a high school class doing this same demonstration. This teacher does a great job explaining why this happens.

Teaching Fronts

For the longest time I have struggled to find an effective way to teach about fronts to my class. I have done various demonstrations, showed videos, used SMART Board lessons, as well as many other ideas over the years. Recently, I stumbled upon this lesson to use with my class and found that it is very effective to get the idea across.

After the lesson we used Kidblog.org as an exit ticket to summarize the demonstration and our understanding of fronts. I was also able to use these posts to clear up any misconceptions that may still remain.

Island Institute and Weather

While looking for resources for our weather unit, I stumbled upon this link called STORMS from the Island Institute based out of Maine. There are some really great lessons found in there that are easily adapted to your classroom, city, and or state regarding weather. The creators of the lessons/materials did an excellent job incorporating STEM lessons and resources as much as possible. Within the lessons you have weather (Science), use of Google Docs (Technology), creating maps (Engineering), as well as graphing (Math).

The lessons cover a really broad age/grade level range and provide opportunities for plenty of differentiation.