Epals Lesson Plan

Grade Level:4
Objective: This assignment will be done in the middle of the unit. You want students to be able to see that there are different types of weather other than what they expierence. You also want the students to be able to see that different cultures measure weather in different ways.
Procedure:
Break the students up into three groups. One group of students will be doing the epal assignment with students that are in Miami, Fl. One group of students will be doing the epals assignment with students from Manchester England. One group will be doing the assignment with students from Ushuaia Argentina.
Have a class meeting about what kinds of things that you want them to find out by doing the epals assignment. Assume that you want both groups to ask the same types of questions for each location.The questions that you want to come out of this disscussion are: How often does it rain? Does it snow where you live? If so when does it snow? What is your temperature like? What months are the warmest and how warm does it get? What months are the coldest and how cold does it get? What would be your average temperature? How do you measure the temperature? Is it measured in Celcius or Farenheit? When is your summer, winter, spring, and fall?
After the students have done their questioning with thier epals they will complie the information together. They will conference with the people from thier group and decide how they are going to present what they found to their classmates. These are large groups so the teacher will need to do monitoring to be sure the students are getting the work accomplished. The presentation of the information they have found is up to the students but in some way they will be asked to use a line graph when presenting.
Closure: After each group has had a chance to present their findings they will be asked to write in their journals to compare and contrast the weather from Miami Florida, Manchester England, and Ushuaia Argentina with the type of weather that they expierence.