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Hurricanes Spark a Storm of Classroom Activity! Hurricane season is here! Use some of these activities and Internet connections to engage students of all ages in a study of these powerful and frightening storms.
You and your students can follow this year's hurricane activity. On the Internet, you'll be deluged with hurricane-related sites; I've highlighted a few below in the Tracking Hurricanes on the Internet section. Immediately following is a handful of activities that you might include in a hurricane lesson plan or that you might use to supplement a current-events discussion of "hurricane season."
ABC Order. Each year, hurricane names are assigned in alphabetical order. The list of names is recycled every six years. The names of this year's hurricanes can be found on the Web page FEMA for Kids: Hurricane Names. List the names for students out of sequence. Invite students to put the list in alphabetical order. (For younger students, you might narrow the list to the first ten (A-J) named hurricanes of the season.) Read aloud. Hurricanes: Earth's Mightiest Storms by Patricia Lauber (Scholastic). Not just another book about "big weather," this is an amazing work that uses narrative very effectively in weaving the story of these powerful storms. Clearly written and relevant text is combined with impressive photographs and informative maps and illustrations that further enhance this excellent work. (Recommendation source: Science and Children, March 1997.) Hands-On Science. Static electricity is stored in rain clouds. When a cloud is so full of static electricity that there's no room for any more, a spark might leap from the cloud. That spark is called "lightning"! Your students can demonstrate the effects of static electricity. Invite them to try the following simple experiment. (Note: This experiment works best when the weather is dry.)
Research. Invite students to learn more about hurricanes. Pose the following questions and see who is the first to come up with the correct answers to all the questions. (You might use this activity as a cooperative group activity.)
Critical thinking:
Science: The Water Cycle. Discuss and draw a simple illustration on a board or chart to demonstrate to students the steps of the water cycle: (1.) Energy from the sun changes water to water vapor. (2.) Water vapor rises. It cools and condenses to form clouds. (3.) Winds blow the clouds over land. (4.) Clouds meet cool air, and rain or snow falls to the ground. (5.) Most of the water returns to large lakes and oceans. Next, invite students to demonstrate the water cycle:
Invite students to compare what happened in the jar to the way the water cycle works? Talk about ways they might speed up the process of evaporation and condensation? How would that compare to a hurricane? Graphing. Invite students to create bar graphs using weather
data.*
(Data shows totals for 1900-94.)
* Data source: NOAA, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/Table13.htm Art. Invite students to create a cartoon to illustrate the following joke:
Why don't weather forecasters tell each other jokes? Geography. Follow the course the next hurricane of the season takes. Invite students to track the hurricane for themselves on their own copies of a U.S. map. They should label cities/towns that are along the hurricane's path and the date and time when the hurricane hit those locations.
Article by Gary Hopkins
TRACKING HURRICANES ON THE INTERNET You might appoint a "hurricane tracking team" or you might assign individual students or small groups to track some of the following sites for hurricane information.
Children, Stress, and Natural Disasters-A Guide for Teachers
Hurricane: Storm Science
Natural Disasters Around the World
CNN's Weather Story Page
USA Today's Weather
The Weather Channel's weather.com
Storm
National Hurricane Center Tropical Prediction Center
Kids as Global Scientists
Links last updated 08/09/2006 |
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