WE5.1: Measure and represent local weather, including temperature, wind…

Weather Detectives Grade 5

Warm winter winds, the hottest spot in the schoolyard and the last frost of spring. Students measure weather fairly and find out why farmers care so much about it.

• Why does a chinook feel like spring in January? 50–60 min

  Students test how moving air speeds up melting, then use a tabletop mountain and a few simple numbers to follow a parcel of air over the Rockies and find out why it arrives warm. They compare the chinook with similar winds around the world.

• Is it hotter by the slide? 50–60 min

  Teams take thermometers into the schoolyard and measure the air temperature at the same spots, the same way, to find the warmest and coolest places. They learn why a fair measurement matters and explain the differences they find.

• Why do farmers care about the last frost? 50–60 min

  Students compare frozen and fresh lettuce leaves to see what frost does to a plant, then use frost dates to work out the growing season in their own town and decide which crops have time to grow. They give planting advice backed by data.

Weather Watchers: What Will the Sky Do Today? Grades K–2

Is it sunny, windy or wet today, and how can we tell? Young scientists keep a class weather chart for two weeks, build wind socks to catch the wind and make a rain gauge from a bottle to measure the rain.

• What's the weather like today? 30 min to start, 5 min a day for two weeks, 30 min to graph

  Children look at the sky at the same time every school day for two weeks and add a weather picture to a big class chart. Then they count the sunny, cloudy, rainy and snowy days, build a bar graph together and use it to say what kind of weather their two weeks had.

• Which way is the wind blowing? 40–45 min, plus 5 min on two or three other days

  Children make a paper-plate wind sock with crepe-paper streamers and take it into the schoolyard to see which way the wind blows and how strong it is. They find out that we can't see wind, but we can see what it does, and they sort days into calm, breezy and windy.

• How much rain fell? 40 min, plus 5 min a day for a week

  Teams build a rain gauge from a clear, straight-sided bottle with a ruler taped on, set it outside and measure the rain each day for a week. On a dry week they make a watering-can 'storm' instead, and test what happens when rain lands on grass, soil and pavement.

Printable practice for WE5.1

These pages practise a closely related idea; the match to WE5.1 is partial.

• Weather Detectives workbook included with the unit

  3 practice pages, 3 readings, 2 English-support pages, 1 word wall, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

Need just this outcome? Build a custom pack from these pages, with its answer key, in about a minute. Custom packs come with All-access and school licences.