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Site Overview | Content Areas | Weather and geography
Site Overview
The What Is Weather website caters for study across all national curricula at Key Stage 2 and the Scottish 5-14 curriculum helping to further geographical skills and the knowledge and understanding of the environment and how people and places are affected by it.
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Content Areas
About weather:
This section uses cartoons to illustrate 7 of the main weather elements:
- Wind force
- Wind direction
- Precipitation
- Temperature
- Sunshine
- Visibility
- Cloud
The material is accessible in an animated or non-animated version.
Weather and People:
This section introduces the concept of climate, and the fact that weather differs depending on the climate zone. Sub-sections illustrate how global weather conditions influence:
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housing |
| clothing |
| sports |
Locations have been chosen carefully to represent a variety of climate zones and where verifiable meterological information is available:
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Barbados, W.Indies |
tropical wet (hot, wet) |
| Aswan, Egypt |
tropical dry (hot, desert) |
| Naxos, Greece |
warm temperate |
| Belfast, N.Ireland |
cool temperate |
| Spitzbergen, Norway |
polar |
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Weather and geography
When children study weather they often
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- make weather-measuring instruments (e.g. rain gauge, wind sock, anemometer) but this should usually be more accurately described as D&T;
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- carry out experiments (e.g. evaporation and condensation of water, as part of the water cycle) but this should usually be more accurately described as science;
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- take weather measurements (e.g. with thermometers and wind gauges) and construct weather charts, graphs or wind roses, but this should usually be more accurately described as mathematics.
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When primary children study weather in geography they should be looking at
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- what the weather is like at named localities
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- how this weather affects people's daily lives -
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what they wear and eat, |
| what their housing is like, |
| what they do, for work and leisure, |
| what they grow (agriculture) |
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- how it affects the environment, (e.g. flooding, erosion)
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They should be considering the spatial aspects of weather. This should lead them to recognise patterns in the weather, from
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- which parts of the school grounds are sunny, shady, sheltered, frosty; to
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- relationship between wind direction and temperature. In the UK generally:
N wind = cold, wet; E wind = cold, dry; S wind = hot, dry; SW wind = warm, wet |
- cold to hot from Pole to Equator,
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- global distribution of wet / dry areas, e.g. rainforest / desert
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This will lead them to an understanding of climate and, later, contribute to an understanding of events and environmental changes like hurricanes and desertification.
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Site Overview | Online Lesson Plan | Offline Lesson Plan
Printable Worksheets | Extension Work | Useful Links
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