Climate Around the World

Cindy Shellito, SERC Cutting Edge

This activity introduces students to global climate patterns by having each student collect information about the climate in a particular region of the globe. After collecting information, students share data through posters in class and consider factors that lead to differences in climate in different parts of the world. Finally, students synthesize the information to see how climate varies around the world.

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The synthesis discussion of the class posters could be an opportunity to launch into a discussion of Hadley circulation, ocean currents, semi-permanent highs and lows, etc. Scientist's comment: Students will need some guidance to understand the reliability of different websites for data/information. The suggested starter sites are good, but students could go off into unreliable sites. Wikipedia is okay to use but not necessarily reliable, and it doesn't really expose students to scientific sources. For example, for a given country, a good place to start would be the country's meteorological organization as opposed to Wikipedia. Activity encourages students to do research but doesn't necessarily help them discriminate the reliability of sources.
Students learn about temperature ranges, precipitation, and extreme weather events for their region and will understand that regional variations in temperature and precipitation exist. Activity gets students to do their own research and thus provides exposure to research. Moves from individual to team/small group to class/large group work. Lesson is well-organized, especially the student handout. Activity is more complex than it first appears; many layers of instruction and content knowledge can be added. Multi-part assignment, so teacher needs to pay attention to the timeline and sequence of steps. Includes links to assessment techniques. Includes good educator's notes.