Not your average weather report

Not Your AverageWeather Report

Weather can be a fairly dull topic and it doesn’t help that our learners have covered it in some shape or form in almost every grade since Grade R. This year I decided to change things up a bit in my Grade 5 Geography classroom, and I am quite pleased with the results.

We have started creating stopmotion animation weather reports.

What is stop-motion?

For those who are not familiar, stop-motion animation takes a series of still images and plays them really quickly after each other, so that it looks like the images are moving. Thousands of movies and short films have been made in this way, dating as far back as 1898. You can check out this link for some amazing examples: http://bit.ly/2XjijSF.

I’ve found that a simplified version of this, is a fantastic learning tool in my classroom.

Why is this an awesome idea?

The reason that I love this project so much, is that it incorporates so many different skills in a meaningful way. Not only are learners researching and reporting on the weather around the country using symbols to represent the various elements of weather, but they are also solidifying their knowledge of the provinces,

sharpening their spatial awareness by plotting various cities according to a map, honing their oral skills when recording the voice-over and practicing the skill of working collaboratively.

So what do you need to get started?

1. The free SA Weather Map and symbol printable (which you can find here: bit.ly/SAWMS.)

2. A smart device with a camera

3. A stop motion app (I use: Stop Motion Studio, which is free on iOS and Android)

4. Scissors, glue and coloured pencils

5. Preferably a tripod, or something to hold the camera in the same position (Andrew Busch has an awesome DIY one made of PVC pipes which you can find here: bit. ly/2XbhtXS)

How will this work?

The way you do this will be up to you and the context of your school. You may decide to have learners work individually or in groups. You may want to set up a station or two where groups or individuals take it in turns to use shared equipment while the rest of the class completes a different activity.

What I did was divide my class into groups of two or three. Each group received 3 copies of the hand out. Learners researched the weather around the country and filled it all in on one of the sheets in pencil. This was their planning.

Once the planning was done, they showed me. At a glance, I was able to see whether they had understood the concepts taught, such as wind direction, and I was able to identify areas that they could improve their plan.

When we were all happy with the planning, they got to work on creating the video. They either set up a tripod with an iPad or they created a stand using a couple of boxes so that the iPad would stay in the same place. It’s very important that only the images are moving and not the camera as this creates a shaky video.

They cut out the symbols from the side of the page and got ready to arrange them on the map. They went province, by province, city, by city, through the map. At the start of each province, they filled in its name and coloured it in. Then they pasted the name of the city and drew a dot where the city is. They pasted on the symbols and wrote in the temperatures and took a picture. This was repeated until all of the provinces and cities were completed, taking a photograph after each.

Once the photographs were all taken, the learners recorded a voice-over, describing the weather for each of the cities.

How to take this to the next level

If you’d like to extend your learners and their technology skills, here are a few ideas:

1. Give the learners a digital version of the map and icons in Google Slides or Powerpoint (also available here: bit.ly/SAWMS). Learners complete the map digitally, take a screenshot in presentation mode after each city and then load these images into the Stop Motion Studio app.

2. Have your learners record the verbal part of the weather report in front of a green-screen. Using a green screen app (like Do Ink), place the completed stop motion video behind the learner so that it looks like a weather report from the news.

3. Rather than research the weather, have learners come up with what they think would be realistic weather for the time of year.

4. Ask learners to incorporate suggestions for dealing with extreme weather conditions in their report.

5. Focus your report on your own town or city but do a daily report over a two-week period using weather that learners have observed themselves.

My class hasn’t finished their projects as of yet, as they only really cover weather in the third term. They are coming along nicely though, and I look forward to the end result. If you would like to share how this goes in your class, you’re welcome to contact me via my website: thinkingcapsza.com or via my Facebook page: @ThinkingCAPSZA.

Jenna Swano