I believe that my students' learning was positively impacted by a science inquiry lesson on weather instruments because it introduced them at the elemental level to some significant reasons for studying the weather and what steps in technology were made to form the foundational elements of the study of weather.
Through the introduction they learned about Galveston, Tx, an example of where a hurricane in 1900 passed through causing great damage, because it was not recognized as a threat. They then followed a train of logic to come to the point of acknowledging that if weather needs to be studied, then we need to know what is used to do that.
After being given directions and materials, they created instruments to gather weather and they predicted what those instruments were used for. I reaffirmed or disputed their predictions based on what information I had gathered on the topic to present to them. Through this, they were able to experience in a real, physical and exploratory way some aspects to creating science instruments, and solving questions about what they were made for. This all was very teacher lead, but it also was guiding the students to think it through for themselves, much like the "Dancing Raisins" taught by Banchi and Bell (2008).
The instruments themselves were not that useful apart from being a physical 3D representation of an accurate instrument. I would not use them to measure the weather, and having the students do so would only cause erroneous misunderstandings of what it means to be an effective scientist and make precise recordings of information. Thus, the introduction wet their interest, provided an example of the items and introduced the tools' names and uses in an elemental yet memorable way, but these rude examples would need to be substituted with better, more helpful tools in order to proceed in a scientifically sound way.
The assessment at the end of the lesson had to be brief. The students were on a tight schedule to make it to their buses. I had the students write down either the name of the description of two weather instruments. They were then supposed to write why a meteorologist would use them. If they got done early, they could write about a scientist whom they were introduced to through our lesson. Only one student got the "extra credit" right. One student wrote that a scientist = a meteorologist as her answer to that question. Too many of the students could not tell me what the names of the tools were and had to use descriptions instead. However, this was an introduction; these instruments are new to the students for the most part. As a response to this problem, I would post pictures and names of instruments around the class to remind them. Another issue is that many students described the instruments and what they measured, but not why a scientist would want them. This would be the sort of thing that I would probably wait until the middle of the end of the unit to retest them and see if they had a better grasp of the information. So many students did not yet show that they had a grasp on why these instruments would be important. I think that their understanding of how weather works needs to be developed more for that to happen because at this point they do not have much of a foundation about weather to try to attach our activity to.
Reference
Banchi, H. & Bell, R. (2008). The many levels of inquiry. Science and Children, 46 (2), 26-29.
