Connecting Outdoor Instruction to Innovative Learning Standards

(COIILS)

an Illinois Scientific Literacy Staff Development Grant

    - Brad Herriman, St. Clair County Regional Superintendent of Schools. . .

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Schoolyard Habitat Cloud Experiment

Sharon Travous Gottschall stravous@stclair.k12.il.us

Description: The Cloud Cover experiment uses technology to determine the percentage of cloud cover and the different cloud types so they can make correlations between clouds and weather patterns.

Grade Levels: 3 - 7 (Note: This experiment can be simplified or made more challenging depending on the developmental levels of your students. See Teacher Information.)

Approximate Time Involved::One or two 30 minute to one hour training sessions, depending on developmental level of students, to teach students how to calculate the percentage of cloud cover and read a thermometer. Five 30 - minute sessions to go outside, observe and photograph and/or sketch cloud formations, take and record temperature. Five 30 - minute sessions to come back inside and use the cloud poster chart to identify cloud types, calculate the percentage of cloud cover, predict the next day's weather. One 30 minute session to enter the data online, one or two thirty minute sessions to examine results, state conclusions, draw inferences as to the relationship between clouds and weather patterns and temperature and weather patterns. Discuss the ways in which cloud formations and types help meteorologists predict weather and compare their predictions and findings to actual weather patterns.

Teacher Information:

The schoolyard will give students access to the world outside the classroom. Students will observe clouds and cloud formations from all four directions to identify cloud types, infer a relationship between clouds and weather patterns, predict weather, compare predictions to actual weather and calculate percentage of cloud coverage. They will also take and record temperatures to determine if temperature has any effect on weather patterns.

Here is an opportunity for your students, especially those at late high school, to present and defend their results to a professional in the field:

Dr. Elaine AbuSharbain, Science Educator at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, has agreed to review any student designed experiments and their results, conclusions, inferences, and recommendations. Elaine's Email Address is: eabusha@siue.edu

Challenging Your Students to Be Problem Solvers:

Pose such questions as:
  • How do your observations and predictions compare with those presented on the TV Weather and in the newspaper?
  • Which cloud type seems to give us the greatest percentage of coverage? The least?
  • What kind of weather does each cloud type seem to predict?
  • Does the temperature have any impact on weather patterns, cloud types and formations?

Student Instructions Available to download as a PDF file.

Needed Materials: Cloud Chart, Observation books ( one per student), Digital Camera with compatible program, thermometers, Pencils, 1cm acetate graph paper, calculators.

Safety Rule: Never look directly at the sun. It can harm your eyes.

Student Information: The constant variables will be the use of the digital camera, time of day the experiment is conducted, the locations where the photographs are taken and observations and recordings of temperature. The independent variable (cloud type) in this case cannot be manipulated, but observation of different cloud types can be used to determine if the existence of one type or another leads to rain, the dependent or responding variable in this experiment. The reporting form for this experiment is set up so that you can record low and high temperature, current temperature, cloud types and percentage of cloud cover. NOTE: Also remember that a good scientific experiment is repeated a minimum of three times. Therefore, your data will be more accurate if you photograph and observe different cloud types for several days.

Procedural Steps for Conducting the Investigation

  • 1. Your teacher will place you in one of four teams, and your team will then be placed in one of four directions at a site that allows you to view about one fourth (25%) of the sky. Always use the same location for each direction: North, South, East and West.
  • 2. Use a digital camera to photograph clouds. Make sure your photo includes as much of that quarter of the sky as possible. You can display your clouds on your computer and then print the photos using a color printer. Use the cloud chart to identify the cloud type and label the pictures.
  • 3. You may also choose to go to these websites, Cloud Boutique or Cloud Types for definitions and pictures of different types of clouds. (These links are also found under cloud links.) If a digital camera is not available, draw the clouds in your cloud observation books. When the digital camera photographs are produced on the computer, keep photographs of each direction a standard size. Your teacher may choose to copy the photos on the copy machine to distibute to students to keep in their cloud observation books.
  • 4. Place a 1 centimeter acetate grid over all of your cloud photos taken to the north, east, west, and south and then calculate the percentage of cloud cover by counting the number of squares with clouds in them and the number of squares not containing clouds. Add the two totals together and then divide the number of squares with clouds by the overall total to get the percentage of clouds. (TOTAL CLOUDY SQUARES / TOTAL SQUARES) X100 = % OF CLOUD COVER)

  • 5. You have just calculated the percentage of cloud cover for the entire sky.
  • 6. Observe and record temperatures. To get the high and low temperatures, check the Internet for your area. A good site to go to is Weather.com
  • 7. Each day, for five days, repeat the experiment using the same locations and procedures.
  • 8. Based on your observed data, predict whether precipitation will fall. Discuss whether the appearance of certain cloud types can be used to effectively determine whether precipitation will fall.
  • 9. After group and classroom discussions have occurred, login to enter your data.

Below is a list of questions that can be used to stimulate student discussions. If your students are at a developmental level where you are able to challenge their higher level thinking skills, then only present them with the first set of questions from each group below. Use the second list of questions as a way to stimulate thinking when your students seem unable to expand their knowledge on their own.

Examining Local Results

Discussion Questions that Require More Critical Thinking Skills:

  • What were your conclusions based on this experiment?
  • What could your infer based on your conclusions?
  • How would you design this experiment differently the next time?

Discussion Questions that Require Less Critical Thinking Skills

  • How many cloud types did you observe?
  • What were the names of the cloud types you observed the most?
  • Did the temperature seem to have any effect on the cloud types,cloud cover or the weather?
  • Would you expect to observe the same types of clouds during different seasons of the year?
  • If students in other parts of the United States repeated this same experiment, do you think they would get the same results?

Examining Local and Online Results

Discussion Questions That Will Require Critical Thinking Skills to Compare Local Data to the Online Data of Others

  • Is the percentage of cloud coverage the same?.
  • What conclusions can you make when you compare your results with the results of others?
  • What inferences can you draw from your additional conclusions?
  • What changes would you now make in this experiment based on the information you now have?

General Discussion Questions that May Occur as a Result of Comparing Local Data to the Online Data of Others

  • Where is the geographic location of the schools who have provided online data?
  • How did the types of clouds you observed compare with those of others?
  • What were the factors that may have contributed to different cloud types observed in different parts of the United States?
  • What similarities existed among those schools that observed the same types of clouds.

Performance and Multiple Choice Assessment Options

Cloud Links

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs Here is another activities concerning clouds that you can look into.

Weather Science Hotlist This website provides a list of different sites concerning weather.

Classroom activities Here is a list of some other activities that you can do with your students that deal with weather.

Effects of Cloud Cover A brief description of how cloud cover effects the weather.

Weather.com Check today's forcast.

Cloud Boutique This site was developed to provide explanations of and access to detailed pictures of some basic cloud forms.

Cloud Types Classification of common clouds types.

More links to Schoolyard Habitat Information

Schoolyard Habitat Links Learn more about developing and maintaining schoolyard and backyard habitats by visiting these links.

Copyright, 2005

by Prism Press

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The text of this publication or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or transmitted in any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the authors.


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