Weatherwizkids.com is a site designed by a meteorologist (Crystal Wicker) with children’s learning in mind. Her site provides detailed information on many weather subjects ranging from severe weather to general weather phenomena such as wind and clouds. Severe weather dominates the side bar with hurricanes and tornadoes topping the list and continuing with rain and floors, thunderstorms, and lightning. She also includes wildfires, earthquakes and volcanoes, which may not seem related to weather from a child’s viewpoint, which is good. For each of the topics I just listed, she provides definitions and explanations and links to external sites if you want to know more about a particular topic. She also includes graphics and pictures that are easy to read and look at. Each of these pages also includes links at the bottom specifically for teachers. The links include several lesson plans (depending on the age of the students you are teaching, it generally ranges from K-5), one or two experiment ideas involving the topic that the page covers and then a link to science fair ideas (for grades 1-12, basically). Also part of her sidebar are topics like Climate (what it is), optical illusions (like rainbows), Weather forecasting (and how it works), weather experiments for kids, weather safety, games, flashcards, jokes, folklore, words (and their definitions), instruments (in order to measure the weather like a thermometer or barometer), photos, a career corner (if a child or teen is interested in becoming a meteorologist, she provides information on how you can do that), “Ask Crystal” (you can e-mail her any question that is not addressed on the site, links, and “kids questions” where she answers some questions from kids like “why is the sky blue?” She provides a lot of really useful information that can be used for a range of small children to pre-teens. The games, which I like to focus on with websites when wanting to teach elementary school students, are not the site’s strongest point, but she does link to some games on other sites (such as the “Wild Weather Adventure” provided by NASA), which I think is good. A way to use this in the classroom is definitely through the experiments she provides. Though if you are teaching a specific lesson on one of the topics, the lesson plan may help you jumpstart your ideas, but the experiments seem like more fun and she provides a good explanation of why the experiment works (like with the “make lightning” or “make a tornado” experiments). Overall, this site is really excellent, however it does lack in its ability to support a multi-literacy classroom. It is only available in English and of all the great resources she provides and links; I did not see anything applicable to English Language Learners. But, I think if you as the instructor take some of the basic ideas she provides for your classroom, it can be adapted for bilingual education as well. I really do recommend this site!
2. The Weather Channel Kids
The Weather Channel is a popular source for some people to receive their weather forecasts, so it’s not surprising they have a site that is geared toward kids. They provide a link to receive the forecast on the homepage, but it isn’t exactly younger kid friendly. The entire site seems to be geared toward older children except in the “seek and find” games they provide (where you find “hidden” objects in pictures that pertain to a particular subject, like weather safety). This site as a whole seems to be more concerned with weather safety than information about various forms of weather (at least, it appears so on the surface due to the nature of the games). There is a “Weather Encyclopedia” however it only provides information on El Nino & El Nina, Flooding, Global Warming, Heat Wave, Hurricanes (& Tropical Systems), Severe Thunderstorms, Tornadoes and Winter Storms. Basically, they only focus on severe weather in the encyclopedia. There is also a glossary of terms that expand past severe weather terms, however does not provide the connection of ideas needed in order to understand our atmosphere and weather. They also provide “online resources” and “teacher resources” which can take you to sites that better explain what weather is and in order to use the teacher resources, you must be a registered user. Though the site could be properly used to teach students, I really wouldn’t recommend it because of its primary focus being on severe weather. Yes, severe weather is typically more interesting but it’s important to know about the weather basics before jumping into sever weather and why it happens. I think if a teacher were planning on going over weather safety in severe weather situations, this site would be a good resource. It generally does not seem to really be a good resource in ELL situations because the site is only available in English and makes no effort, even in the other online resources it offers, to help students in multi-literacy classrooms. Overall, I am very unimpressed by the site, but I am sure it could be used well if need be.
3. EdHeads.Org
The edheads site provides activities for students to use on several topics, one of which is weather. The primary function of the site is the “activities” for weather, which, once you click on the link to them, include “predict the weather” (using the “Predict-o-matic!”) and “Forecast the weather.” I spent some time playing both games and they are probably the most fun games I have found thus far in searching weather sites. The forecast the weather game requires the student to know what the symbols on the map mean when they see a weather forecast (such as a red capital L means a low pressure system). They are given the forecast and they must match the forecast on the map. The predict the weather game requires a student to not only understand how to read a forecast map that we often see on the news but also be able to realize that the weather moves and we can predict, based on how fast it is going and what direction it moves in, what the weather will be like wherever it goes. Both games are entertaining and I believe would be a good use of computer time if you were doing a weather unit for class. The site is generally built for students around the 4th grade age, not only due to the nature of the games but also due to the other resources the site provides. They provide a weather glossary, only containing a few, but important terms, a Fahrenheit to Celsius & Celsius to Fahrenheit converter, an “interesting people in weather” page and weather class lesson plans. The lesson plans for weather are suggested for 4-5th graders and the glossary explains some of the more complicated things to understand like what a front is or how clouds are formed or what air pressure is and how it affects our weather. Though the site generally seems to be kind of lacking in multi-literacy availability, I think the temperature conversion portion of the site is very good since the U.S. is on the Fahrenheit scale while most everywhere else is on the Celsius scale. It allows you to put in a temperature on either scale and it will tell you what that temperature is on the opposite scale. It also provides the formula you would need to use in order to convert it manually. Overall the site is very good if you want to use technology in the classroom for games. There are only 4 or so lesson plans available that are submitted by teachers, which you can use if you want a more hands on approach as well, but I think this site’s strongest suit is in the games.
4. Anglomaniacy
The last site I found, I made an effort to try to find one that would cater to ELLs more. The anglomaniacy site provides a “weather picture dictionary” where it provides pictures of the more common phenomena of weather (cloud, cold, storm) and provides the word underneath. When you click on the picture, it has a voice that will say the word, which I think is a wonderful idea because often times hearing the word helps more than reading it. The site has several online resources teachers can use for students besides the Pictionary including hangman, a matching game, Simon says game, spelling game and word search. All of the games are very simple and mainly test to see if the vocabulary is learned. More abstract concepts are not addressed. A teacher may also use the site for offline activities because they provide bingo card templates, crossword puzzles, matching cards, word search puzzle, picture tests and a vocabulary quiz, which you may print. All of these resources revolve around the 10 weather words that are provided in the picture dictionary. I think if you have a classroom of very young learners, maybe in kindergarten, that are native speakers, this is a good site for them. However, very beginning ELLs are what the site is made for and I think it works well. The site also provides these resources for other topics. I think using the computer for learning the vocabulary is a good way to get the students to learn how to use the Internet as well. You can then follow up with in-class activities like bingo or the picture test on paper without the website to help them later on.
Evaluated by: Anne Pugh
