1st Grade Weather Unit

1^st Grade Weather Unit Blueprint

Lesson 7: Comparing Inside and Outside Temperatures

Pacing Suggestions:

Lesson to be taught at the beginning of the school year and repeated after Winter Break, Spring Break, and at the end of the school year.

See Unit Calendar for details.

Teacher Resources:

Tips

Essential & Unit Questions* ¹

Benchmarks ²

Formative and Summative Assessments ³

Using Assessments to Monitor Student Learning

Why is it important to keep accurate records or notes about things that are observed?

If an experiment is run the same way as it was before, what should happen?

What warms the land, air and water?

1B(K-2)#3: Describing things as accurately as possible is important in science because it enables people to compare their observations with those of others.

1A(K-2) #1: When a science investigation is done the way it was done before, we expect to get a very similar result.

Introduce 4E(K-2)#1: The sun warms the land, air and water.

Class discussion about correct use of thermometers and teacher observations of students using thermometers (See Procedure Steps 1-3 on page 73 in Teacher's Guide.)

Class discussion of teacher demonstration experiment of thermometers placed in direct sunlight, on asphalt, and in shade (See "Teacher Tip" under "Teacher Resources" for additional information.)

Do students understand that correct use of the thermometer is necessary for accurate temperature readings?
Do students understand that the difference in temperature between the shade, asphalt, and sunlight section is due to the sun warming the land?
Do students understand the importance of taking the temperature in the same place and time each day?

What tools can help us learn about the weather?

How does the weather change from day to day? How does the weather change from month to month?

How does the weather change from year to year?

1B(K-2)#2: Tools such as thermometers, magnifiers, rulers, or balances often give more information about things than can be obtained by just observing things without their help.

4B(K-2)#1: Some events in nature have a repeating pattern. The weather changes some from day to day, but things such as temperature and rain (or snow) tend to be high, low or medium in the same months every year.

11C(K-2)#1: Things change in some ways and stay the same in some ways.

4C(K-2) #2: Change is something that happens to many things.

Classroom Temperature Graph and class discussion about the temperature changes/patterns observed—do they make sense in terms of the changes we observe with the seasons? (Have class monthly Weather Calendar and class Temperature Graph going year long. See "Teacher Tips" under "Teacher Resources" for additional information.)

As the school year progresses, do students see patterns emerging in the data?
From monthly Weather Calendar, do students see that the weather changes from day to day?
From the Temperature Graph, do students see that the temperature generally does not fluctuate much from day to day? Do they observe that the temperature is generally high, medium, or low for any given month?

* Essential/Unit questions are major questions driving the unit. They are directly aligned with the benchmarks. No single lesson addresses each question in its entirety. By the end of the unit, students should be able to answer these core questions.

1. For conceptual benchmarks.
2. Bolded sections indicate portion of benchmark addressed
3. Unless noted as a Summative Assessment, the assessments are formative and should be used to guide teaching and learning.

1st Grade Weather Unit Blueprint

1^st Grade Weather Unit Blueprint