Weather Station

With a student-made weather station (that tracks temperature, rainfall, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, humidity) and/or the Internet, students measure weather in a variety of ways, write about procedures, make predictions, and use averaging.

Objectives

• Students will observe and describe weather.
• Students present data about weather through journals, discussions, and graphs.
• Students will make predictions by averaging.

Materials

• Computer with Internet connection
• Thermometer
• Journal

Procedure

1. Discuss local weather; have students predict local weather based on their current observations.

2. Set up weather station either in the classroom or using Internet resources.
3. Have students make the recording materials.

4. Decide how often students are going to make the measurements, e.g. once a day, twice a day. The more detailed and accurate their measurements, the more specific the picture of the patterns will be.

5. A ruled ledger or notebook is an ideal place to record the measurements. List measurement types down the side (one event per line) and print the dates across the top to create a simple grid. See sample grid below.

6. Use the data collected to create graphs and find averages of each measure.

7. Students can also write about predictions, how they made the weather station, and the events they observed.