Students will be given a weather map and use their prior knowledge to explain how the map was created and how it could be useful for predicting future weather.
Students will watch a video of a cold front passing through a city. Then, they will use three weather maps each 12 hours apart to give past, current, and future weather for a specific area (focusing their knowledge on fronts and pressure systems).
Students will work in groups and each become an expert on various aspects of weather (temperature, surface air pressure, air pressure changes, and dew point).
Students will take each of the four maps and put them together to see how meteorologists create one weather map. Using a map that has all of their data on it as well as new data will be used by the students to give current weather information as well as predict future weather.
Students will predict how many drops it will take to have a sponge drip. They will relate this to how weather predictions can be wrong if conditions change, but have a greater probability of being correct if conditions stay the same as to what they were in the past.
Students will be assessed on their knowledge of what goes into predicting the weather (past knowledge, current conditions, using probabilities, etc.).
Students will predict how many drops it will take to have a sponge drip. They will relate this to how weather predictions can be wrong if conditions change, but have a greater probability of being correct if conditions stay the same as to what they were in the past.
Students will be assessed on their knowledge of what goes into predicting the weather (past knowledge, current conditions, using probabilities, etc.).
Students will examine an article that discusses the importance of weather satellites in making more accurate forecasts.
In the previous concept, students explored the factors that affect atmospheric and oceanic circulation, and developed and refined models to explain the relationship between these global circulation patterns and the distribution of heat and moisture on the planet.
In this cycle, students will construct explanations to answer the guiding question: How do interactions between the atmosphere and hydrosphere create weather? Students will answer this guiding question by using models to explore the relationship between air masses, ocean currents, and weather. They will obtain information from text and video resources to explain how air masses form, and how the interaction of air masses affects frontal systems. Students will apply their learning, using an online interactive to explain the relationship between atmospheric and oceanic conditions and El Nińo and La Nińa events. Throughout the cycle, students will develop and refine a model of air masses on Earth, which they will use in conjunction with the atmospheric and oceanic circulation models they developed in the previous concept, to explain the relationship between air masses, fronts, and weather.
In the next cycle, students will analyze and interpret data to explain how past and current weather information is used to predict the weather, probabilistically.