Severe Weather

mariabecht
Feb 23, 2018
2 min read

Recently I taught a lesson identifying severe weather and understanding what it is. I used a wide variety of materials to teach this lesson, while tapping into my students background knowledge and creativity.

My essential question was What is severe weather? My objective was “I can describe severe weather in a poem”.

I started off the lesson with a class discussion about severe weather and if the students have even experienced it. We talked about the different weather Florida has and discussed Hurricane Irma- which is a severe weather that all my students have encountered.

I read the book below and had students make observation about each of the photos. Next I showed videos of each type of severe weather. The video spark the interest of the students. I had the studenst engage in turn and talk to discuss what was happening in the video. After each turn and talk i had a group share and I explain what happened as well. The student on the carpet were in close proximity, but this aided their learning. My students enjoy to learning from each other and share what they are are thinking. Turn and Talk is a medium I use in my instruction to fit their needs. Managing Diverse Classroom states that sitting close together, like we do during turn and talk, can sustain their focus and can make children feel more confident in themselves!

After learning about the different types, I stated what the students would be doing, which was write a severe weather poem. I gave 2 examples of severe weather poems and then released the students to write their own. Classroom that Works states that children in most effective classrooms do a lot of reading and writing. This lesson had my students do writing in science and engaged them in meaningful work. Writing should not just be bound to one time block, as stated in Classroom That Works.

In a later lesson, student shared their poems around the world! I used their poems to see if they had meet the objective of describing severe weather with a poem. In Assessment is Essential, the author writes that for some learning goals a product is the best response form to gauge achievement. In this lesson, the I think the poem went well as my students could be creative, express the severe weather however they wanted and had the chance to share with their peers.