Science: Hurricanes

September is the perfect time to study hurricanes.  We're right in the thick of the season.  

Day 1: A Broad Beginning

Being the first few weeks of school, we had the opportunity to make frequent use of the laptops.  I began by giving the kids a long list of hurricane related sites and a broad goal: record 3-5 facts.  

As I circulated around, I observed how they navigated around and asked a lot of questions.  The first thing I noticed was that almost every student recorded more information than asked for.  Some copied down diagrams while others developed full pages of notes.  Of course, there were some students who immediately asked, "I've got my 5 facts, what do I do now?"  Alas, Paris wasn't built in a day, or something.  

When we debriefed the day's activity one student voiced an opinion that was echoed by many in the room, "As soon as I saw a full page of text, I closed the window and looked for another site."  The overwhelming majority favored animations with short text boxes.  

This summer I read about the idea that the internet is changing the way we think and this discussion raised some questions for me.  Some say it's shortening our attention span.  Here's a few things I've observed in the past few years while using the internet as a teaching tool:

• Our ability to create and share multimedia has made visual information ubiquitous.  
• While students may avert lengthy texts, they engaged with the material from the start of the class to the end of class.  
• Students independently surpassed set expectations for recording information.

When asked for 3-5 facts, this was the norm.

Should we worry that the immediate response to lengthier text to immediately abandon ship?  
Is it an effect of the internet shortening our attention span?

Given the option, it's clear that most students opted for visuals with short text.  However, those students spent an impressive amount of time recording the information.  They repeatedly viewed online "study aides" and spoke knowledgeably about their topic. 


I'd like to believe that it's not that our attention spans are shortening but rather, that we're find more efficient ways to transmit information that we once relied solely on text for.  

Taking this into consideration, I began work setting up our online hurricane resources.  I try to keep in mind that not everybody needs to become a meteorologist.  They need a basic understanding.  The kids who gravitate towards severe weather will hopefully seek further information.  

Day 2-3: We Narrow the Focus

I handed the students the study guide for the test.  It focuses on the key vocabulary and the major concepts.  From there, I asked them to set their own goal for the day.   

Students continually popped over to show me what they were working on.  And while the volume was noticeable, they were actively sharing sites and hurricane information with each other.   

The video below highlights some of the students' work over these few days.  I want to apologize in advance to my phenomenal female scientists who are noticeably absent from the video.   I'm disappointed that I didn't get clips of you.  Next week. 

Here are some additional notebook images:

Day 4: Tying it together


At this point, the kids had time to self-select information and they seemed to take ownership of the topic.   Students were able to independently attain a tremendous amount of information.  I wanted to help them put together the pieces they collected this week. 


I planned a presentation using Dan Roam's Unfolding the Napkin.  Dan's book asserts that we should use simple pictures to express complex ideas:

Our brains want to enjoy what they're doing.  They want to learn, they want to see new things, they want to better understand old things and above all they really, really want to figure stuff out.  Pictures are pure excitement for our minds- especially when we see them drawn right in front of us.  When we see the pieces of a picture come together, our brain starts to play mental fetch: it so much wants to "get" whatever we're being shown that it starts making connections, guessing, and anticipating what is like to come next.  This is how we learned about the world as infants, long before any of our verbal processing capability was formed, and we're extremely good at it.  Simple pictures actually encourage our brains to work the way they are hardwired to work, and so our brains get happy.  

As I colored (poorly), the students contributed information about the pieces they researched.  

I couldn't have been more excited about the kids' reaction.  


For anyone who's interested, below is a language based study guide that  Mrs. Foley created.  Please use this as a guide to direct study.  The online resources and their science notebooks contain visuals and visuals make their brains happy.  

Click to Download

Click for Resources

I'm excited for next week.  It will be a busy one.  We'll be using Mrs. Henry and Mrs. Jordans' hurricane tracking activity, reading the Red Cross's hurricane preparation brochure, and creating our own hurricane infographics.