Rain Gauge Activity

• In this lesson, students will review the water cycle, create rain gauges, and learn why precise data gathering is necessary and important.
• Students will get to experiment, create different rain gauge designs, and learn about the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission and its importance.

Positives

• This inquiry-based activity is engaging and allows for a variety of results.
• The lesson does a great job of providing a lot of context to deepen understanding.

Additional Prerequisites

• The link to the article explaining the importance of engineering skills does not work.
• Some blue words in the Teacher Guide look like links but are not clickable.
• There is narration for the video clip on slide 7, contrary to what it says in the Teacher Guide.
• Students should already know the forms of water or states of matter.

Differentiation

• If time permits, students may enjoy demonstrations to illustrate evaporation, condensation, and the fact that salt does not evaporate with water.
• This lesson would be a great follow-up to this lesson on exploring the water cycle or any other exploration of the water cycle.
• Language arts students can demonstrate their understanding by writing about the importance of precise precipitation data.
• Students can log precipitation for a week and create a graph using this resource.