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Classroom activity Grade 1 Science

Pinewood's Weather Watchers: A Grade 1 Water Cycle Tally Activity

A grade 1 activity where Weather Watcher pairs tally sunny, cloudy, and rainy days over two weeks and use the count to question a slow-draining puddle by the door.

Objectives

  1. Students will observe and record the day's weather in one of three tally categories for ten school days.
  2. Students will use the completed tally chart to answer how many more days had one kind of weather than another.
  3. Students will turn a repeated observation about a puddle into a question the class wants to investigate.

Vocabulary

Key words: sunny, cloudy, rainy, tally, puddle

Teacher overview

At Pinewood Elementary, Ms. Alvarez's grade 1 class takes on a two-week job called Weather Watchers. Every school day, one pair of students steps just outside the door, looks at the sky, and adds a tally mark to a class Weather Board with three columns: Sunny, Cloudy, and Rainy. The activity turns a skill grade 1 students are already building, tally marks and simple counting, into a genuine daily observation habit, and it ends with the class using its own data to notice a real problem worth asking about.

Activity Directions

  1. Before the two-week unit begins, tape a large Weather Board poster to the wall by the door. Draw three columns labeled Sunny, Cloudy, and Rainy, tall enough to hold ten tally marks each.
  2. On the first morning, gather the whole class by the board. Explain the job: each day, a new pair of Weather Watchers will check outside right after morning meeting and add one tally mark to the column that matches that day's sky.
  3. Model the first check yourself with the whole class watching. Step to the door, name the weather out loud ("It is cloudy today"), and make the first tally mark together.
  4. For the next nine school days, assign a new pair of Weather Watchers each morning. Each pair checks the sky while you watch from the doorway, states the weather aloud to the class, and adds one tally mark to the matching column. This check takes about five minutes.
  5. On rainy days and on the next few mornings, have the Weather Watchers also glance at the low spot by the side door where water tends to collect, and report back one sentence: "The puddle is still there" or "The puddle is gone."
  6. By the second week, the class will likely notice that the puddle is still there two mornings after it rains, even after the sun has come back out. Hold a short class discussion: "Why do you think the puddle takes so long to disappear? What question could we ask about it?" Record the class's question on the board without answering it yet, since defining the question is today's goal.
  7. On the tenth school day, gather the class at the completed Weather Board for the wrap-up discussion and the numbered Student Handout questions below.
  8. The activity ends once all ten school days are tallied and the class has agreed on one puddle question to carry into a future science conversation.
Pinewood's Weather Watchers: A Grade 1 Water Cycle Tally Activity — Grade 1 Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Weather Board wrap-up. Suppose the class's completed ten-day Weather Board shows 6 Sunny tallies, 3 Cloudy tallies, and 1 Rainy tally (use your own class's real counts if they differ). Use that sample board to answer questions 1 through 4.

  1. How many days were sunny?
  2. How many days were not sunny?
  3. How many more sunny days were there than rainy days?
  4. How many school days were tracked in all?
  5. What is our class's question about the puddle by the door?

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: 6 days.
    Counting the Sunny column on that sample board gives 6 days.
  2. Answer: 4 days.
    Using that same sample board, Cloudy (3) plus Rainy (1) equals 4 days that were not sunny.
  3. Answer: 5 days.
    Using that same sample board, Sunny (6) minus Rainy (1) equals 5 more sunny days than rainy days.
  4. Answer: 10 school days.
    Using that same sample board, Sunny (6) plus Cloudy (3) plus Rainy (1) equals 10 school days tracked in all.
  5. Answer: Why does the puddle by the door stay wet for two days after it rains instead of drying up right away?
    Puddle question (accept any reasonable version). This is the question the class defines from its own observations, not a fact to look up in this activity.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Pair struggling counters with a partner during the daily tally, and let them touch each mark as they count aloud. For the handout questions, provide the finished tally counts already written in numerals (Sunny 6, Cloudy 3, Rainy 1) instead of asking students to count marks themselves.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask advanced students to predict, before the wrap-up count, which column they think will have the most tally marks and why, then check their prediction against the real data. Challenge them to write one more comparison question of their own, using the words "how many more."

ELL supports

Pair the words sunny, cloudy, and rainy with simple weather icons on the Weather Board itself, and teach a matching hand gesture for each (arms up like sun rays, arms crossed for clouds, wiggling fingers falling for rain). Allow the daily weather report to be one word plus the gesture rather than a full sentence.

Extensions

Photograph the completed Weather Board and compare it with a board from a different two-week stretch later in the year, such as early spring, to see whether the mix of sunny, cloudy, and rainy days changes with the season.