Teaching Sequence

Student and classroom organisation:

Step 1.

Begin this activity by asking students to watch the following video (also available on the student worksheet - https://video.nationalgeographic.com.au/video/science/earth-sci/weather-101-sci/):

Ask students to record all the different types of weather in the video (or as many as they can). Write student responses on the board.

Step 2.

Most of us would have heard someone complaining about the weather, and it is quite likely that your students themselves have complained about the weather at some point. Ask your
students to think about the complaints that they have heard or made about the weather in your areas. Write these statements on the board and whom they were said by.

Step 3.

Divide the class into groups and assign each group with a different region of Australia to investigate. Regions could include:

Capital cities;
Major regional centres;
Significant geographical sites (e.g. Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, or the Blue Mountains).

Using the student worksheet, ask groups to investigate the weather at the location they are looking at (the Bureau of Meteorology website would be a useful place to start: www.bom.gov.au). Ask students to record today's temperatures at their location and the average weather conditions (temperature, rain, snow etc.) at that time of the year in their location. Groups will then need to write a statement that they think a local in their location would make about today's weather (e.g. "gosh, it never usually gets this hot" or "I love these balmy autumn days").

Step 4.

Once students have completed investigating the weather for their Australian location, ask them to repeat the process but this time looking at somewhere else in the world. Groups should choose a capital city to investigate (or the teacher can assign one for each group).

Remind students that some places use Fahrenheit while others use Celsius.

Step 5.

Ask groups to create a short presentation (maximum 2 slides) showing the details of their weather investigations. Ask students to reflect on whether the weather experienced that day in the location they looked at was typical for the climate at that time of the year.

In addition to writing a statement that a local might have about the weather, also ask each student to write down what their own personal response to that weather would be.

Assessment/Reflection

1. Ask students to answer the reflection questions on the student worksheet.

2. Ask students to create a weather map of Australia or the world (using Google Maps) showing the day's weather around the country/world. Ask students to present these to the class as if they were presenting the weather on the television. Ask them to also discuss which weather they would most like to experience and why.

Extension/Homework

Ask students to draw a picture or write a short story describing themselves in the type of weather they nominated as the one they would most like to enjoy. The picture/story should show:

The clothing required to enjoy this type of weather;
How you can stay warm or cool in this weather;
How people from different parts of the world who live in this weather construct their houses and conduct their daily lives to manage this type of weather (e.g. what sort of houses do people who live in snowy areas build?).

Talking about the weather

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