Week 14: Air
Weeks 13, 14, and 15 make up a three-week cycle about air (Atmosphere). Currently, you are in Week B: Teacher As Scholar.

This week, build your own knowledge of the Atmosphere. Use the resources listed under Readings, discuss your questions and answers with your teammates, then submit your individual questions and answers to your Portfolio. Work with your team to come up with well-supported answers to the essential questions and submit them to the portfolio for a grade.

Assignments

Submit your individual questions and answers to your Portfolio in the Classroom for a grade.

 

Team: (by midnight Sunday) Review the Team Goal and Rubric for your team’s work this week. Answer the essential questions about air with your teammates in Teacher As Scholar in the Classroom.

Submit your team answers to the essential questions with supporting statements and evidence to your Portfolio in the Classroom for a grade.

Essential Questions about Air

Work with your teammates to answer each other's questions and these essential questions:

• How do you study air?
• How does air change?
• What causes air to change?
• How does water exist in air?
• How does air help living things?
• How do you know about weather?

Readings

1. Clouds The atmosphere, "air sphere," is the envelope of air that surrounds the whole Earth. When you look at the Earth from space, you usually see lots of clouds. Rain and snow are often falling underneath the clouds, but you need a radar to see them.

Some places on Earth (like the poles and the equator) are almost always covered by clouds. If you look at the globe, you can see the line of clouds across the middle that closely follows the equator.  There are also clouds over the jungles of Brazil. Lines of clouds along the leading edges of storms can be seen in the north and south Pacific and over North America. Other places, like the deserts in the American Southwest, are almost cloud-free.

2. Earth at Hand, pp. 90 and 103, and "Gone with the Wind," pp. 104.

3. On your own, read about the following topics related to the study of the air:

• Climate/weather
• Do plants eat air?
• Water cycle
• Global warming (ecosystem - stability)
• Clouds and energy (Do clouds make it warmer or cooler?)
• Seasons and energy distribution

4. The content children are expected to know is described in the National Science Education Standards and Project 2061 Benchmarks:

• Air is a substance that surrounds you, takes up space, and whose movement is felt as wind.
• Some events in nature have a repeating pattern. The weather changes some from day to day, but things such as temperature and rain (or snow) tend to be high, low, or medium in the same months every year.
• Clouds and fog are made of tiny droplets of water.
  • Water cycle in the atmosphere
  • Evaporation - condensation
  • Water can be solid or gaseous (water vapor)
  • Changes in substances
• Weather changes from day to day and over the seasons.
  • Wet/dry seasons
• Weather can be described by measurable quantities such as temperature, wind direction and speed, and precipitation.
• Wind shapes and reshapes the Earth's land surface by eroding rock and soil in some areas and depositing them in other areas, sometimes in seasonal layers.
  • Changes in the Earth (slow and fast)

Web Sites

• Why Cloudy Nights Tend to be Warmer Provides a clear and concise explanation of how clouds affect temperature.
• Basic Cloud Forms A collection of cloud descriptions taken near Plymouth, New Hampshire by the Plymouth State College Meteorology Program.
• Weather in Our Lives Create a weather-based newspaper with your students. Click on "Sample Activities" and then "Activities from Wright State University" for a list of other Earth System Science lesson plans and activities.
• Bad Meteorology Addresses common misconceptions about clouds, rain and other weather-related concepts.

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