Solar System Unit

NSTA Standards

Students should have practice in observation of weather phenomena and possess a weather vocabulary.

Key Concepts

Students should observe changes in weather and develop their weather vocabularies to enable them to recognize subtle differences in weather conditions.

Teaching Ideas and Tips

Go to the Thematic Literature List to print out a great bibliography of nonfiction literature you can use with your weather unit. This page also includes a vocabulary list.

Print one copy of Songs, Poems and Fingerplays

We have done the work for you. This one resource will provide you with several songs, poems and fingerplays to teach to your students. Each song or poem includes suggestions for body and hand movements and how to vary the poems to personalize them for the children in your class. Copy these onto chart paper and make a bulletin board display. To help with beginning reading skills (movement from left to right, return sweep, beginning sounds) use a pointer when you read the poems or when your students are repeating them.

My Weather Wheel (Skill: Color and cut for tracking weather)

Young children are just developing weather vocabularies. After your students have colored, cut and assembled the wheels, take them outside when the weather changes. Show them how to move the wheel to indicate the day’s weather and begin to teach them words that are descriptive of the weather they are observing.

Here is a partial list of weather words they should know: sunshine, sunny, cloud, cloudy, storm, stormy, rain, rainy, wind, windy, snow, snowy, fog, foggy, Practice using both the noun and the adjective form of weather words. For example: There is fog on the playground (noun) It is a foggy day. (adjective)

More advanced students can develop a more complex weather vocabulary. For example, the day can be warm, hot, or sweltering! There might be a gentle breeze, a blustery wind, or a gust of wind.

Classroom Management

If you are doing the assessment with non-readers, students should still be able to record the weather correctly, but consider having a one-to-one oral interview to interpret the results of the chart. If students are unable to write sentences for the assessment, provide a word wall and/or have students dictate sentences to you.

If you are doing the Weekly Weather charts, consider making your own chart so that you can be sure the student responses are accurate. Remember that students may not always agree your assessment of weather conditions. For example, if it is just a drizzle, students may not put down "rain." Now you have a wonderful opportunity to introduce rain words like sprinkle, drizzle, and downpour.

As you read stories, be on the lookout for weather words that you can add to a bulletin board. Students will enjoy saying words like "blizzard" and "torrent." As you are writing those words, be sure to engage your class by asking them to help you with the beginning and ending sounds. Be sure to point out silent letters or "doubles" such as "zz" in "blizzard."

Vocabulary

Rain – Precipitation that is liquid and falls in droplets. (rainy)
Sunshine – Sunshine is rays of heat and light from the sun.
Sunny – "Sunny" means that most of the sky is clear with only a few clouds.
Hail - Hail is rain that has frozen into a ball.
Snow – Snow is rain that has frozen and crystallized. (snowy)
Wind – Wind is rapidly moving air. (windy)
Cloud – A cloud is water that is trapped in the sky. Clouds can be gray, black or white. The cloud may pass by or bring us rain or snow. (cloudy)
Fog – Fog is water droplets that are trapped near the ground. (foggy)
Storm – A storm is rain with strong winds and rain, snow, sleet or hail. A storm often has thunder and/or lightning.
Thunder – Loud rumbling noise caused when air is heated by lightning.
Lightning – Lightning is flashes of light seen during a thunderstorm.

Use this Solar System Vocabulary list as a start—add more of your own—and use Make Your Own tools to create your own flash cards!

Printables Resources

Bulletin Boards
Check Out This Space

Fine Motor Skills, Alphabet Practice and Beginning Reading Skills
Letter R: Letter Formation Practice
Alphabet Skills
The "un" Wheel

Look What's Buzzing (Skill: Coloring sheet with flowers and a rainbow)

Rain or Shine (Skill: Craft Idea)

Stand Up Lion and Lamb (Skill: Celebrate March with color and cut out animals)

Rainbow Pattern (Skill: Coloring sheet with rainbow)

Weather: Mobile Pattern (Skill: Create a weather mobile - easy)

Weather Mobile (Skill: Create a weather mobile – more complex)

Alphabet Skills (Skill: Fill in missing letters of the alphabet.)

Award Certificates

What is Next? (Skill: Sequencing; weather symbols)

Assessment

Make copies of Weekly Weather Pictographs and have these on student desks each morning as "morning work." Each day for a week, help students record the weather that day on the chart. The following Monday, help students answer the questions at the bottom of the page. Give credit for accurately recording the type of weather for each day and for responding correctly to the questions at the bottom of the page.

Download Activities and Games to get directions for setting up a play television weatherman center in your classroom. Have your students take turns being the weatherman. They can describe the weather they saw outside that morning and/or make predictions about weather for later in the day, the evening, or tomorrow. Assess students’ weather vocabulary development by monitoring how they use nouns and adjectives to describe and predict the weather.

Download Picture Prompts from Printables. This page will provide students with opportunities to write sentences that go with weather pictures. This is great for use on a smart board or in small group sessions. Assess your students on their ability to use weather words correctly in their sentences.

Send Home Letter

You may want to use the Send Home Letter

Dear Parents,

Our class has been studying weather. We are trying to develop our weather vocabularies. Please help us by paying a lot of attention to the weather at your house. Help your child understand the differences between a gentle breeze and a gust of wind; between a warm day and a sweltering day; between a sprinkle, a drizzle and a torrent of rain. Your everyday use of weather words will not only make your child more aware of weather phenomena, it will stimulate conversation at your home and expand your child's vocabulary.

With your help and supervision, allow your child to experience weather safely. A walk in a gentle rain is great fun. So is splashing in mud puddles and looking for a rainbow when there is sun and rain at the same time. Remind your child to inhale the fresh air after a rain and notice the cool, crisp, fall and winter air. Every weather phenomena can provide a learning experience for your child.

Your child's teacher,

__________________

Homework

Print copies of December Weather for each child. Parents will help students look at weather over the course of the month of December and respond to questions at the bottom of the page.

Reading Skills: Descriptive Words (Skill: Use words to describe the sun)

Word Search: Sun, Cloud, Rain (Skill: Recognizing weather words)

Easy Word Search: Umbrellas in Rain (Skill: Recognizing weather words)

More to Explore

Instant Internet Activities:

Make it rain
This page contains easy instructions for making it "rain" in the classroom.

Follow-Up Activities:

Go to Spring & Summer – Wind for great lesson plans concerning wind. This Printable contains a poem with several synonyms for wind. You can demonstrate what these words mean by using a table fan and crepe paper streamers. Start the fan on its lowest, most "gentle breeze," and gradually increase the speed to a show students a gust of wind, a hard wind, a stormy wind. See if students can think of other words to describe wind. Put these on a bulletin board with clip art as a decoration.

As we do morning calendar and opening exercises, we often say the day is "rainy" or "sunny" or "snowy." Try to come up with more and more complex descriptions of the weather students are experiencing. One way to do this is by beginning or ending playground time with a short discussion about the weather. Try to find places on the playground where it is cool, or cold or windy or windier, or hot or boiling. Notice when the sky is without a cloud, partly cloudy or overcast. As the school year progresses, your morning calendar time should become ever more descriptive.

Remind students to look to the sky and notice the surrounding air to predict the weather. Even young12/1/2010 children can spot dark clouds and notice the strong wind that precedes a storm.

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REMINDER! Make Solar System Flash Cards and Other Puzzles with Make Your Own Tools