Weekly Lesson Plans

Monday

We kicked off our weather unit with a lesson on the layers of the atmosphere. Not technically a fourth grade standard in weather I still introduced it because the atmosphere comes up in our Astronomy unit. On the left hand side was a cloze note sheet that went along with a PowerPoint I made about the different layers. Students had to fill in as I went through the presentation. Students then watched a BrainPop on the subject. On the right hand side I had made a flip book for students to make and illustrate about the layers.

Tuesday

We discussed weather tools and their uses. On the left hand side there was a fact sheet about the basic tools that we read. I had a flipchart to go with it with plenty of pictures. I had samples in the class to pass around. On the right hand side students filled out an accordion foldable where they had to list the tool, give its use, and draw a picture (to make the accordion foldable click on the "video" label on the right hand side menu. I did not have students make since it is a little complicated but I was able to make 70 or so in front of the tv over a couple of days. One teacher got a parent to make them at another school).

Wednesday/Thursday

We made anemometers and wind vanes in class. We went outside and used them (with the wind vanes they got to use some compasses as well). Students got to take them home. Students worked on finishing up their weather tool accordion foldable.

Friday

Students took a weather tool quiz, made rain gauges and then watched a "Nature's Fury" video. Student who were not done with their foldable had to finish it during the video.

PICTURES - Accordion Foldable, Anemometers, Wind Vanes, Rain Gauges

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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