This resource provides a brief description, a short video, review questions, and adaptive practice questions about the difference between weather and climate, using Hawai'i and California as examples.
Students will learn what weather and climate are, how the greenhouse effect works, and how the climate on Earth can change.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The video shows students different climate zones on a global map and uses an animation of the greenhouse effect to show the change in energy balance caused by greenhouse gases.
The adaptive practice questions provide a self-assessment tool for students to check their understanding.
Additional Prerequisites
Each student will need to have access to a computer and the internet for the interactive self-assessment questions.
Students must create an account to use some of the interactive tools.
Differentiation
This is a great resource to introduce the topic of climate change to students for the first time.
This could be used for virtual learning, homework, or an in-class assignment.
The resource succinctly explains the scope of weather and climate and their interactions in the earth-atmosphere-ocean system. This is recommended to introduce students to the concept of weather and climate.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
MS-ESS2-5 Collect data to provide evidence for how the motions and complex interactions of air masses results in changes in weather conditions.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
