Lesson 2: Weather                            

Objective:  The students will use simple weather instruments to gather data to describe weather changes from day to day. They will make daily observations of the weather, collect information and use computer applications to create graphs to display the data collected. Students will use an on-line service to search and gather data (key words: rainfall, wind speed and direction, temperature, and tides) to be used in a research report.

Materials: thermometers, newspapers, computers, TV weather, Internet weather web sites, charts and graphs software  

Activity:  Students select four Florida cities from various parts of the state. 
The fifth city must be their own.  
The students must take daily temperature readings for their town. 
They will collect the data for the other cities from the newspaper, television, and Internet for a one-week period.  
Students will display the daily high and low temperatures. Rainfall amounts, wind speed and direction, high and low tides will be recorded in a daily computer-generated weather journal kept by each student. 
The class will use the Internet websites The Weather, Florida State to collect the weather data.  
After the information has been gathered, the students will construct graphs and tables using graphs and tables applications on software to create, print and  display the weather data.  

• Students will open the spreadsheet application
• Enter data: cities, days and temperatures 
• Select the data
• Choose the type of chart to be created
• Print
  

Evaluation: Students will complete temperature graphs using the computer. They will also have daily weather journal entries for the remaining weather data gathered.

Extension Activity: Learn How to Graph Online

• Students log onto Graphing
• They then select the type of graph they want to learn how to create
• Choices: bar, area, pie, line or horizontal
• Student then reads how to create this type of graph and can click to see an example of that graph

Homework: Write a paragraph about the weather in their city that day, include temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind speed and direction. Information can be located in daily newspaper, via radio or TV, or Internet Weather sites. Print out and share with class Tip: If student does not have a printer at home, he or she can save to a disk and print in school.

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