Why I love snow season
As an educator, I love nothing more than capitalizing on a real-life experience to make learning relevant. Snow season is just that time of year!
My second grade classes and I discussed weather earlier this year when their teachers were discussing weather. This week, we're revisiting, but adding the twist of analyzing sources. You see, as I am typing this we are awaiting our first winter weather event. The forecasts are changing every 3 hours- and in the last 24 we've gone from snow/sleet mix of 1-3 inches to a Winter Weather Warning with 4-6 inches of snow. We'll have to see how it lands!
Yesterday, I modeled making a Google Form for the class, and we decided what information we wanted to collect. We talked about where we got our information from, and created a drop-down list of top sources. We then wanted to collect data for the Friday/Saturday time frame that looked as if it would be our weather arrival time. The goal: next week, look at the predictions to see which ones were most accurate.
We collected predictions, put them in our form, posted the form on our library home page, and tweeted it out for others to share~ and next week we'll evaluate.
But beyond data collection the best part are the questions and conversations.
*What temperature is freezing?
*If the high temperature is below freezing, what do you suppose will happen to whatever falls from the sky?
*If the sun is out, but the temperature is below freezing, will our snow/sleet/ice melt and disappear?
*If the temperature is going to stay low for 2 days after the precipitation, what impact do you think that will have on us?
And the conclusions were great! The consensus? With expected highs being less than freezing, and single digit lows- the students felt that whatever fell would still be here on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They're hoping for no school.
My conclusion: more time to read- lets go check out books!
My second grade classes and I discussed weather earlier this year when their teachers were discussing weather. This week, we're revisiting, but adding the twist of analyzing sources. You see, as I am typing this we are awaiting our first winter weather event. The forecasts are changing every 3 hours- and in the last 24 we've gone from snow/sleet mix of 1-3 inches to a Winter Weather Warning with 4-6 inches of snow. We'll have to see how it lands!
Yesterday, I modeled making a Google Form for the class, and we decided what information we wanted to collect. We talked about where we got our information from, and created a drop-down list of top sources. We then wanted to collect data for the Friday/Saturday time frame that looked as if it would be our weather arrival time. The goal: next week, look at the predictions to see which ones were most accurate.
We collected predictions, put them in our form, posted the form on our library home page, and tweeted it out for others to share~ and next week we'll evaluate.
But beyond data collection the best part are the questions and conversations.
*What temperature is freezing?
*If the high temperature is below freezing, what do you suppose will happen to whatever falls from the sky?
*If the sun is out, but the temperature is below freezing, will our snow/sleet/ice melt and disappear?
*If the temperature is going to stay low for 2 days after the precipitation, what impact do you think that will have on us?
And the conclusions were great! The consensus? With expected highs being less than freezing, and single digit lows- the students felt that whatever fell would still be here on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They're hoping for no school.
My conclusion: more time to read- lets go check out books!
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