Weather Monitoring

1.Who are the students your students will communicate with (specific location, grade level)?

Our third grade students of Southwest Michigan will be communicating with a third grade class in Southern California.

2. When would your students contact these other students (at what point in their project work)?

        Our third grade students will be informed prior to the project beginning how the observations and communication process will occur. They are going to compare observations and findings, with another group of students in California. Our students will predict, observe, and analyze the weather in Southwest Michigan, and will also be predicting what the other school’s weather results would be. Twice a week our students will communicate with the school in Southern, California via Skype. Our students will share data collected of Southwest Michigan’s weather that has occurred in the days since last communicating with the Californian students. Our students will be able to collect data from the other students about Southern Californian weather that had been observed, and collected by the students. Students from our classroom will share their two day prediction for Southern California, and the other students will share their predictions for Southwest Michigan’s weather.

Both classrooms will continue to collect data for every school day for two weeks, and report their data to the other class twice a week. After two weeks the classes will communicate and talk about  their findings for both regions; any patterns noticed, observations made, etc. They will be able to discuss any differences and/or similarities in the weather from day to day, and between the two regions. They will be able to ask questions about weather in different regions, and also answer questions about the weather of their native regions. Together the classes can brainstorm why the weather is different in different regions.

3. What kinds of questions would they ask each other and what kinds of information would they share?

        Some questions the students could ask each other would be what type of weather they’ve been having, if anything out of the ordinary happened, if it rained or was really sunny a lot, what the temperature is like during the day and nighttime, and predictions half way through like what they think the next week will be like. The two classes will share their observations and findings both throughout, and at the end of the project.

4. What will they do with the information they get from the other students?

 The students will share their overall results and present the whole analysis, and findings of the project to the other class! Both classes will share graphs, and data they have collected and produced about their local weather. Next, they will collect and discuss the data and graphs they collect from the other class.At the beginning of the project both classrooms will create a prediction chart of what they think the weather will be. At the end of the project they will then compare it with what their predictions were.They can then watch and learn about the similarities or differences and see how weather is across the country at the same time!