Weather

June 26, 2015

We loved our weather unit that we completed at the end of the year, but we are not loving this Chicago area weather. It's been cloudy, dreary, and gloomy. It doesn't feel like summer at all. Hopefully, you are enjoying better weather than we are!

We were able to transition nicely from water, the water cycle, and clouds straight to weather. We first had students make a model of the layers of the atmosphere. They labeled each layer and wrote what happens in it. Here is a sample of that.

We wanted to have our students understand the components that make up our weather, so we had them work with a partner to read the information on the BBC What is Weather? site.  While reading, the partners had discussions about their reading to answer the questions we created for them.  The answers were not as easy to come by as we thought they would be.   For more added fun, the students went to another BBC weather site that was very interactive.

From there, we began our nonfiction reading about violent weather. We used the book Storms by National Geographic. The students took notes on the details about thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. We found a fun, familiar Steve Spangler science project to do- Tornado In a Bottle. We bought enough connectors so students could work in small groups to create their own "tornado." Then came the challenge. The students had to connect what they learned about tornadoes from their reading to the tornado in the bottle. We found a great explanation on a site called sciencewithtoys.

The last thing we wanted to share with you from this unit is our weather idioms. We used the book Birds of a Feather: A Book of Idioms with Silly Pictures by Vanita Oelschlager to review what idioms are. Then, each student got a weather idiom of their own. They had to show their understanding of the meaning of the idiom through a written sentence, and then a draw a silly, literal interpretation of the idiom.

Well, we are keeping our fingers crossed that the sun will come out soon, and it will feel like summer. One good thing to come from these dreary days is that we have had time to look for, and read some new children's books that we want to share with our class next year, and with you next time we blog!

Kim and Anne

Clouds and More Clouds

June 9th, 2015

School is out! Yesterday was our last day. We can't believe how the year flew by! Last week we said we would share our cloud activities with you, so here they are!

We first read information about the three main cloud types online. One of our favorite sites was Weather Wiz Kids, but there are a ton more out there. After we took notes from this site, we color coded categories we found within our notes. This helped us with our organization when taking notes from other sites. Eventually, this would also help us organize our expository cloud writing.

To solidify our understanding of the cloud types, and to add on a fun project, we painted a chart of the cirrus, cumulus, and stratus clouds. We included their elevation, and we tried to our best to use the paints to make the clouds look realistic.

After taking notes for a few days, it was time to write our expository piece on clouds. Before we could start, one of our students came up with a fantastic idea on his own. He suggested that we create a Google Slideshow of the information, instead of just typing it in Pages. We couldn't believe how the class bit on that, and how engaged they were. Each slide show included photos and video to go along with the writing. These are some screen shots of part of one of them, since we cannot share them to the public.

While we were writing, we read the book, Cloud Dance by Thomas Locker. It is a beautiful prose picture book. We wanted the kids to experience different types of genre on the topic of clouds. Cloudette, by Thomas Lichtenheld is another delightful fiction story on clouds. It is filled with literary devices, such as puns, alliteration, allusion, and idioms.

Lastly, our kids got a kick out of reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. After reading, we wrote a Found poem together. This was the first time writing this type of poem. It was a fun challenge!

It's not quite vacation for us yet. We have math committee work for the next few days. But after that, we plan to take a few days to breathe! See you soon!

Kim and Anne