Below are ideas for extending this topic beyond the activity and exploration you just completed.

• Lesson Assessment and Answer Key
• Readings: Learn more about weather patterns with readings!
• Language Arts Activity: Writing about the weather.
• Activity: Read a real thermometer.
• Activity: Look for weather patterns.

The following readings are free with registration at Readworks and include comprehension questions.

• Snowy Town. Two friends build a snowman on a winter day. (Grade 3)
• Summer Vacation. A boy learns about how scientists predict the weather. (Grade 3)
• Winter Weather in the United States. How is winter weather different in different parts of the USA? (Grade 2)
• The Job of a Meteorologist. How do meteorologists predict the weather? (Grade 2)
• What Are Weather Patterns? There are many different weather patterns. (Grade 2)

Have your students write about daily weather in the form of a descriptive weather report. Help them with their vocabulary by creating a Weather Word Bank. If you need some inspiration, check out Bryn Donovan’s Master List for Describing Weather.

Writing about the weather–in poetry or a personal account—gives students an opportunity to expand their vocabulary and practice descriptive writing.

Give your students a chance to practice their thermometer reading skills in the real world. Hang an inexpensive weather thermometer outside your classroom. Have your class can track how the temperature changes over the course of a day, a month, or even the school year.

You can also create a practice thermometer using paper, straws, and pipe cleaners. You can find instructions on how to construct one here!

Keeping a weather journal can help your students observe and identify patterns in your local weather. If your class has kept a weather journal before, use their new understanding of weather data to take the activity to a new level. Involve students in decisions about their weather journal with these questions:

• What data will you keep track of? Some options are temperature, precipitation, wind, sky conditions (cloudy, clear).
• How will you collect your data? Will you check the weather report, make observations yourself, or a combination of the two?
• How will you record your data? You could use words or pictures or graphs.
• How often will you record your observations? Every day? Once a week?

You can also use fun and free weather tracking printables for this activity!