Classroom Activities

Students analyze cloud data from a storm that crossed the United States in late November 2019. They identify cloud types from photos of the sky in various locations to identify the zonation of clouds across a cold and warm front.

Outdoors on a sunny, warm day, students explore how areas in the shade and light colors remain a bit cooler than areas in the sunshine and dark colors. Then they apply what they’ve learned to design a shade structure that will keep a playground cooler during hot summer days.  

Students consider weather conditions before, during, and after a tornado and build a model to visualize what is happening when a tornado occurs.

Ice is slippery, sometimes causing cars and trucks to skid out of control. This activity allows students to safely explore these icy conditions and develop their own hypotheses and experiments.

Students learn about the urban heat island effect by investigating which areas of their schoolyard have higher temperatures. Then they analyze data about how the number of heat waves in an urban area has increased over time with population.

Flash floods happen when quick and heavy rainfall causes placid waterways to turn into raging torrents. This teaching box is filled with explorations and readings that help secondary students learn the science of flash flooding. Students will learn that storms with unusually heavy rainfall can cause a flood, that the shape of the land and the ability of the ground to hold water influences whether a flood is likely, and they will learn how flash flood risk and probability is assessed. Get your feet wet by bringing the science of flash floods.

Students test the hypothesis that a 100-year flood happens once every hundred years, learning how the probability of a flood does not mean that floods happen at regular intervals.

Students review graphs and charts of severe weather data then answer "True and False" questions about the content conveyed.

GLOBE Weather is a five-week curriculum unit designed to help middle school students understand weather at local, regional, and global scales.

In this activity, students identify the location of an atmospheric river over the Pacific (also called the Pineapple Express) by analyzing water vapor data collected by COSMIC satellites.

Hurricane Resilience is a 20-day high school environmental science curriculum for use in coastal locations where hurricanes are common and helps students make connections between the science of hurricanes, how they affect their community and region, and how we can plan for a more resilient future.

Students investigate maps and data to learn where and when hurricanes form and how climate change may be affecting them.

Explore STEAM education resources developed at the UCAR Center for Science Education.

Students research the 2013 Colorado floods, present the information they find, and summarize all information presented.

Students explore factors that influence why certain areas in the United States have more tornadoes than others and observe a model to visualize what is happening during a tornado.

After reading about hurricanes and their impacts on the coast, students model conditions during a hurricane that produce storm surge and witness its impact on model coastlines.

Project Resilience is a 20-day high school curriculum that helps students examine the environmental challenges facing communities along the Gulf of Mexico and learn about resilience planning using a resilience planning toolkit.

Students investigate a physical model to explore how satellite data impacts weather monitoring and forecasting.

Students learn how making changes to our environment can help keep people safe and reduce the impacts of weather hazards as they explore a human-built pond that is sometimes dry and sometimes filled with floodwater. 

Tornadoes, also called twisters, are rare and powerful weather events in which columns of air rotate dangerously fast. In this teaching box are resources to help students learn why and where tornadoes happen and how these weather events impact people’s lives.

Students review what scientists know and what they’re working to understand about the relationship between extreme weather events and climate change.

Students read news articles about Hurricane Irene, present information with classmates, and construct a timeline to describe the hurricane’s story over time and across geographic area, exploring what happened, how people were affected, and how they reacted.

In this activity, students will compare stories about a weather event from different media sources and different perspectives.

Winter weather may cancel school, but it’s also an opportunity to learn science. This teaching box is filled with hands-on activities that get primary grade students to learn the science of winter weather including concepts of earth science. Explore the educational resources in this teaching box and bring snow and ice into your classroom!