Extreme Weather
Teacher Information
WeatherSummary:
From El Nino to killer heat waves, weather extremes capture headlines and the popular imagination. This science and geography activity builds on kids' natural fascination with weather disasters.

Your students will research exciting weather sites on the Internet.

Prerequisite Skills:
Basic understanding of how weather works, intermediate electronic research skills using tools like Microsoft Encarta 98/99 Encyclopedia Deluxe and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, and fundamentals of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Microsoft FrontPage.
 
Time Allotted:
3-5 class periods
How to Begin:

1. Start with a class discussion of weather extremes students have experienced personally. Ask your class: If a science reporter were to interview you about the worst weather you've ever witnessed, what would you say? What made that weather so remarkable?
2. Next, brainstorm a list of other kinds of extreme weather. Encourage students to think of as many examples as they can, from storms they've heard about on the news to events they remember from history.
3. If kids include events such as earthquakes or volcanoes on the list, go back when your brainstorming is over and ask them to think carefully about whether these disasters really fall under the heading of "weather." Together, develop a working definition of weather that includes the concept of the atmosphere and the impact of such factors as temperature, humidity, cloudiness, precipitation, wind, and pressure. Direct students toward an understanding that extreme weather, then, involves one or more of these factors occurring with unusual force or quantity.
3. Have each student choose the three most personally fascinating forms of extreme weather and list them on a sheet of paper. Collect the papers and divide your class into teams of three or four, according to weather choices.
4. Explain that each group will now become a crack team of meteorologists with special expertise in tracking, analyzing, and explaining its chosen weather extreme via a presentation for whole-class viewing.

Requirements
Description:
Here is your mission: To figure out what makes extreme weather act the way it does, find the most awesome examples of its power, and then create a Web page to explain it all to your classmates. Ready to take the weather world by storm?

Step A
Storm is Born
Software: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Front Page

What to do: Get to the heart of your weather extreme.

WEATHER SITES

  1. Open the Causes of (Your Storm) template.  Save the document with a file name weather.html.
  2. Here are directions for creating your web page.  This will include what you need for inserting pictures, links, etc.
  3. Click here to view a sample web page.
  4. As you read through the articles you find, look for explanations of what causes your extreme weather. Copy new facts you find -- along with any graphics or photos -- and paste them in your web document.
  5. Choose Web Links, and explore the Internet for more information about your kind of storm. (You can also try some of the sites listed in the box on this page.) When you find new facts, copy and paste them in your web document.
  6. Open a Microsoft Front Page document to collect and organize the facts, photos, and graphics you find on the Internet about your chosen weather extreme. Look for pictures, diagrams, and other images to help explain your extreme weather. Save these images by clicking your right mouse button, choosing Copy, then pasting them in your web document. You can also save them to your folder on the H drive and insert them that way.  Keep track of your sources!
  7. Add the best sites to your Favorites folder.
Step B
Map the Zone (optional)
Software: Microsoft® Encarta® 98/99 Virtual Globe (Windows only)
What to do: If you have Encarta Virtual Globe, use this optional step to find out more about the geography of your killer weather.
  1. Launch Virtual Globe, click on Learn About the Earth, and scroll down to The Physical World. If your weather fits the general category of Monsoons, Tropical Storms, and Tornadoes, go to that article for lots of facts and maps. Otherwise, read through Seasons: Climate, Stars, and Earth Changes. Copy pertinent facts for your Word file under a heading called "Weather Zone."
  2. Go to Map Styles on the Toolbar, choose Natural, and check out the Climate, Eco-region, and Temperature maps of your storm hot zones. Use the About This Map feature to interpret the data you're seeing.
  3. When you find maps you want to keep, go to Options and choose Copy. You can then paste your maps into your web document.
 
Step C
One for the Record
Software: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Front Page
 What to do:
  1. Go back to your Favorite Web sites to look for "worst ever" occurrences of your extreme weather. You may discover that "worst" has many meanings. Is the worst blizzard the one with the most snow, the highest winds, or the longest duration? In your web document, set up a new heading called "Record-Breakers" to save these facts.
  2. Pick one record storm to explore further. Search the Web for articles reporting on the storm as it happened.
Step D
Stormy Multimedia Presentation
Software: Microsoft Word, PowerPoint
What to do: Pull all of your work together as a Presentation.

Use Microsoft PowerPoint  to turn your facts into a presentation.
  1. Open your web document. Organize the facts you've gathered (you might find the Outline option in the View menu helpful for this). Rewrite the material in your own words, as though you were were explaining it to a friend.
  2. Open PowerPoint and copy and paste your information into a slide show. 
  3. When your editing work is complete, go to the File menu, and choose Save As.  Make sure you save this as weatherpres.ppt.
  4. When your presentation is complete, invite your classmates to test it out. Then work with the other teams to create one big Weather presentation. Publish it to your school intranet.
  5. You now have your information from the extreme weather lesson as a web page and a PowerPoint presentation.