Topic: Seasonal Changes/Weather
I would like to use aspects of the Espero 11 Activity on Seasons and What to wear & the Discover Primary Science Investigating Children’s Coats for first class .
To:
• identify different kinds of weather: rain, wind, thunderstorm, and sunny
• know that for every season you wear different kinds of clothes
• know that clothing protects you from the cold
• discover that some kinds of weather occur more often in certain seasons
Trigger Question: Have you ever gone out wearing the wrong coat ? – in order to relate to children’s prior experiences and the Irish weather where it feels like we can frequently have numerous seasons in one day!
Explain you want the class to help. Present the question to the children.
1. In pairs ask the children to share their experiences.
2. Once they have had a brief chance to chat give them some prompts to help their conversation:
• Have you ever got wet/cold/too hot because you wore the wrong coat to school? Has it happened more than once?
• How did you decide what to coat to wear to school today?
• How do you find out about what the weather is going to be like?
• Who decides what coat you wear to school?
• Looking at labels on their coats to observe the material names (allows for movement too).
3. As the children talk, try to spot children who normally don’t contribute that are sharing lots of ideas with their partner.
4. Invite the children to share their experiences and try to pick some of the children you noticed who are normally quiet in science discussions. Make sure you really value their contributions and their expertise. You could record their experiences on a large piece of paper for display in the classroom.
5. After the children have shared, ask if they think their comments could help us understand our science – hopefully some will deduce that the weather can be different according to the time of year/season. During the summer (of old anyway !?!, we experience warmer, longer days and in winter it is colder and the nights are longer.. – you could extend here by asking whether Climate change has had any impact on our seasons?
Activities:( to be linked but extended over a period of a month all linked to seaons and weather/materials)
• Children can draw a picture of what they wear for each season and write underneath why. This could be an activity you return to each season as children need to observe and discuss spring, summer, autumn and winter. Or you could take photos of the class wearing their outdoor clothes at different points in the year.
• The class will record what the weather is like each day that week and make a display. You could position a rain gauge outside, so that children can check the amount of rainfall each day. Similarly, we could also check the temperature each day or once weekly over the course of a month and fill out a class chart for this which we would have displayed in the classroom.
• As children are expected to understand that the hours of daylight vary during the year, we will also record each month perhaps from December – March whether it is light or dark when they wake up, or when they go to bed.
• Children with families living in other parts of the world could share their experiences/knowledge of the weather in those countries or experiences of a visit abroad where they noticed a different weather pattern.
Extended Learning & Cross-curricular Links over a series of lessons linked to the weather theme :
– Trigger: link to the scientist Charles Mackintosh – who he is? What piece of clothing was named after him? ) & do a science lesson on investigating coat materials but extending it to test for waterproof materials
– Maths- data gathering on the coats belong to the children per categories: colour/ length/ hood/waterproof
– Art – Design your own coat per Investigating Children’s Coats Lesson Resource with the prompt q’s
What season is it for?
• What will the weather be like?
• What sort of temperature is it likely to be?
• What material/ materials will they use?
• How can they make it practical? (e.g. type of fastening, pockets, hood).
• Can they suggest where they might use their coat (going to school, helping in the garden,
going to a party etc).
– Drama- rain, wind and storm story per Eserpo Activity 11