Today is the second day of the tornado lesson. I began the lesson by asking them if they had a chance to finish their tornado alley maps. Most of them said that they did not. I told them that they would get a chance to finish them today. I did another KWL chart with them. Then we took turns reading from a handout that I gave them from the website Sky Diary. It talked about what causes a tornado, how to measure a tornado and what to do during a tornado to remain safe. There were some challenging words in this handout and some of the more advanced readers would call out the pronunciation of word if someone else was having trouble saying a word. The next time I teach about tornadoes I will definitely present the information in a different way than a handout. I just thought that this would be something that they could put in their weather folder and have to reference. Maybe it was a good idea.
After the handout reading, I conducted a tornado in a bottle experiment with the students so that they could see how a tornado works inside. The experiment included a bottle of water, some dishwashing liquid, salt and some food coloring. I filled the bottle up with water then put the salt in, shook it up and then added the dishwashing liquid and the food coloring and then I spun the bottle counter clockwise and the water inside began to whirl around like a tornado. The students could see the salt swirling around in the bottle with the food coloring and the detergent making the swirling water stand out even more. The students loved this and when the experiment was over I had to get a little help from Mrs. K. to get them back to their seats because they wanted to just keep playing with the tornado in a bottle.
When the students returned to their seats, we finished our KWL:
Learned:
- Tornado in bottle is awesome
- Tornado can kill you
- Lay flat on the ground during a tornado if you are outside
- Sometimes you can survive if you are lucky
- Can destroy a building
- Can lift air
- Can suck up and spit out
For some reason I thought that they would remember more of the scientific details or jargon, but most of what they learned was the common sense things. This told me that their retention of the scientific jargon associated with this lesson did not take and I would need to do more focus on the vocabulary if I was to do this lesson again.
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