Weather - Wicked Winds! - Episode 107



1) Getting Started
• Ask your students to discuss extreme weather events they remember. Do bad storms keep them up at night? Do they worry about tornados or hurricanes?

• How do meteorologists predict the weather?

• Meteorologists talk a lot about barometric pressure. What is that?

• Do any students have devices in their homes that measure temperature, humidity or pressure?

• Do any students use them? Could they be used for investigations?

• Show students a copy of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. List different methods for weather prediction described in the book.

2) Going Deeper
• There are hundreds of weather myths, legends, and folktales. Name as many as you can. What would you need to find out if these legends are true?

• Create plans for a class weather station. What would you include? Ask teams to design a homemade anemometer to measure wind speed, a barometer to measure air pressure, a wind vane, a thermometer, or other instruments. Could you use these to predict the weather?

3) Investigate With DragonflyTV
• Watch the video and see how Mari and Lindsey tested some weather folktales or give your students the results from the video (go to investigations to explore) and have them draw their own conclusions.

• Mari and Lindsey found that some folktales described current weather, but not future weather. What’s the difference between describing and predicting?

• The girls said the weather didn’t change dramatically during the nine days they did their test. Should they have conducted their test during changing weather?

• Try making your own weather predictions for a week using observations of natures clues. How successful can you be?

4) Investigate On Your Own
Using the Forecasting or Tornado Model segments to get students thinking, ask your students to design their own investigations. Here are some challenge cards give to student teams to get things rolling.