In this lesson, students will learn about how volcanoes and mountains affect weather. Includes video links, discussion, demonstration, and an additional activity.

NGSS: K-ESS3-2

Time: 50 minutes

Materials: umbrella and sponge.

Concepts underlying the first of the Essential Principles of the Climate Sciences are aligned with topics typically taught in the elementary grades. This article identifies lessons that will help elementary students develop an understanding of how Sun's light warms Earth and how variations in daylight hours are associated with seasonal change. This article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle.

This article includes lessons that elementary teachers can use to build the foundations of climate literacy while meeting elementary science standards. Lessons are paired with literacy activities as well.

With the assistance of a few teacher demonstrations (online animation, using a radiometer and rubbing hands), students review the concept of heat transfer through convection, conduction and radiation. Then they apply an understanding of these ideas as they use wireless temperature probes to investigate the heating capacity of different materials sand and water under heat lamps (or outside in full sunshine). The experiment models how radiant energy drives convection within the atmosphere and oceans, thus producing winds and weather conditions, while giving students the hands-on opportunity to understand the value of remote-sensing capabilities designed by engineers. Students collect and record temperature data on how fast sand and water heat and cool. Then they create multi-line graphs to display and compare their data, and discuss the need for efficient and reliable engineer-designed tools like wireless sensors in real-world applications.

In this lesson, students will learn review days, months, and seasons. They will also learn weather vocabulary and limited clothing vocabulary.

This unit is a teacher-facilitated, interactive lesson designed for a 3-hour course. For shorter class times, you may use the scheduled break as an ending point and resume the rest of the lesson the following day.

This book making activity is a way to assess students knowledge of cloud types, their description, and the weather they bring.

In this activity students will learn about various natural disasters. Students will begin by watching a few news videos about natural disasters in Taiwan, then go through scenario cards discussing how they would handle certain disaster situations.

This sequence of instruction was developed in the Growing Elementary Science Prjoject to help elementary teachers who were working remotely.  We developed a short storyline that ties together a few sessions to help explore a specific concept.  We tried to include some activities that honored and included the student’s family and experience, and some that included the potential for ELA learning goals.
The book “Storm is Coming!” introduces students to the idea of severe weather. Students observe a time-lapse video of a hail storm.  Students interview a family member about a memorable weather event and what that person did to prepare and stay safe.  Students explore the implications of all of their interviews.  Students make plans for how they can prepare for future weather events, including an Engineering Design exercise. 
It is part of ClimeTime - a collaboration among all nine Educational Service Districts (ESDs) in Washington and many Community Partners to provide programs for science teacher training around Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and climate science, thanks to grant money made available to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) by Governor Inslee. 

Students learn about the remote sensing radio occultation technique and how engineers use it with GPS satellites to monitor and study the Earth's atmospheric activity. Students may be familiar with some everyday uses of GPS, but not as familiar with how GPS technology contributes to our ongoing need for great amounts of ever-changing global atmospheric data for accurate weather forecasting, storm tracking and climate change monitoring. GPS occultations are when GPS signals sent from one satellite to another are altered (delayed, refracted) by the atmosphere passed though, such that they can be analyzed to remotely learn about the planet's atmospheric conditions.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Dark matter, cosmic rays, otherworldly lightning, and meteors. Not bad for a day’s work. That’s the ambitious workload researchers have charged to Mini-EUSO, a revolutionary new telescope peering back at earth from aboard the International Space Station. Hitching a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket, Mini-EUSO docked with the ISS just this past August. Fitted with state-of-the-art optics, its goal is to carry out the first-ever nighttime observations of the earth’s atmosphere at near-ultraviolet wavelengths. This special “UV eye” will turn the atmosphere into a gigantic laboratory for exploring fascinating scientific phenomena—some bound to teach us more about the earth, some that could teach us more about the entire universe. One of Mini-EUSO’s tasks will be to search for traces of a substance known as “strange quark matter”. This matter is generally believed to make up the super-dense core of neutron stars. But it might also be scattered as droplets both big and small across the universe..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Helps students develop the idea of air pressure. How high pressure and low pressure affect the development of weather. This lesson explains the ways in which air moves, from a lot to a little, and the effects movement of air can have. 

This website is a collection of resources concerning learning Arabic as a second language as well as information about Arab culture, Islam, and various Arab countries. There are links to videos from YouTube on the site relating to Arabic study, including songs and lessons, as well as a host of other more unrelated things, such as tornadoes. Links to opportunities to study Arabic, teacher resources, and Arabic newspapers are available.

Sometimes when you are working as a team, you can perform miracles." Andrea Putteet

Ginger Zee shares her story on becoming the Chief Meteorologist at ABC News!

Solar Physicist Dr. Kelly Korreck provides an in depth look of her exploration of the Sun and its effects on space weather.

Do you have what it takes to fly through the eye of a massive hurricane? Find out by learning about First Lt. Garrett Black, a member of the USAF 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron.

Join Anita, Simon and Dennis and the rest of Ms. Patel's class as they research when the hummingbirds have gone and when they might return. Download the Seasons Module storybook and learning activities!

In this video segment adapted from Haskell Indian Nations University, student filmmakers explain why it is important to them to make a video about climate change.