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

This week, apply what you have learned about effective activities and the Atmosphere to create your own lesson. Use the resources listed under Readings, discuss your ideas with your teammates, then submit your lesson to your Portfolio. Read and respond to your teammates' lessons in discussion and then rate them in the Portfolio.

Assignments

Submit your individual classroom application with goals, activities and assessment and a rationale using the criteria 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. Offer feedback to your teammates about their sphere lessons on air in Teacher As Designer space in the Classroom.

Submit your peer review (rate) of each other’s classroom applications to your Portfolio in the Classroom for a grade.

Essential Questions about Air

Design your activities to elicit your students' questions, and to help them to think about the essential questions you have been addressing:

• 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

In the National Science Education Standards what children understand about the air is described:

"There are many ways to acquaint children with Earth-related phenomena that they will only come to understand later as being cyclic. For instance, students can start to keep daily records of temperature (hot, cold, pleasant) and precipitation (none, some, lots), and plot them by week, month, and years. It is enough for students to spot the pattern of ups and downs, without getting deeply into the nature of climate.

Students can discover patterns of weather changes during the year by keeping a journal. Younger students can draw a daily weather picture based on what they see out a window or at recess; older students can make simple charts and graphs from data they collect at a simple school weather station."

Weather as a yearlong theme is described as part of the standard on Earth Science. Students design instruments for measuring weather that are within the range of their skills and a parent provides expertise. They make measurements using their mathematical knowledge and skills; they organize data in a meaningful way and communicate the data to other students.

Web Sites

• Welcome to Nye Labs Online Fun-filled facts and resources. Enter the lab to find printable Episode Guides on Atmosphere, Erosion and Wind.
• The Wind Inquiry activities from The Franklin Institute begin with examples of how the wind is the friend that makes kites fly and wind chimes sing, but it is also the fierce force behind hurricanes and thunderstorms. Activities include: Blustery Beginnings, Investigating Wind Energy and Current Creations.

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