Brief Description Objectives Materials and Resources Activity Description Internet Resources

• Grade level: Upper elementary and middle school.

• Subject Area: Science, Language Arts

Brief Description

    Following the previous lessons, a special severe weather awareness day is planned where students present their research reports, along with their action plan and any other associated products (models, Web-pages, etc.) to the rest of the class/school.
Objectives

    Students will:

• Prepare severe weather pattern materials for a group presentation.
• Collaborate on the presentation of their severe weather pattern reports to the school or class.
• Convert their printed reports into HTML for publication on the Web (Optional).
• Develop and refine their presentation skills.

    In developing our lessons and activities, we made some assumptions about the hardware and software that would be available in the classroom for teachers who visit the LETSNet Website. We assume that teachers using our Internet-based lessons or activities have a computer (PC or Macintosh) with the necessary hardware components (mouse, keyboard, and monitor) as well as software (operating system, TCP/IP software, networking or dial-up software, e-mail and a World Wide Web client program, preferably Netscape, but perhaps Mosaic or Lynx). In the section below, we specify any "special" hardware or software requirements for a lesson or activity (in addition to those described above) and the level of Internet access required to do the activity.

1. Special hardware requirements: none.
2. Special software requirements: none.
3. Internet access: none.

    Coordinate a severe weather pattern awareness day for the class and/or school, including the principal and others members of the community.

As an alternative, if an Internet connection is available along with Web space for members of the class in a group setting (e.g., computer lab), consider publishing the students' severe weather pattern reports on the World Wide Web. Coordinate with your Internet service provider - or your local Web server personnel if appropriate - on setting up the space and providing links from the home page to the students' reports.

Prepare flyers for students to take home and encourage parents to attend the student presentations.

• Have students present their finished severe weather pattern reports to the whole class and/or the entire school. This activity can be a small class presentation, where every student presents their report and related materials to the other members of the class, or it can be a large community and school event in which everyone is encouraged to participate.

• Students can present in teams - with each student presenting a portion of the finished report. Allow time for others to ask questions and make suggestions.

• If a severe weather pattern action plan has been developed or already exists, include this plan in the presentations and have students link their research to the plan. Concentrate on how what they found influenced the action plan and how they would prepare the school in case their severe weather pattern occurred.

• Collect all of the student reports and publish them as a book or on the Web to broaden their use outside the school. If the reports will be published on the Web, have the students translate their reports into HTML using ClarisWorks 4.0, Microsoft Word 6.0, or any of the other text to HTML conversation programs available (see Teacher Professional Development).

For those who are interested in publishing their work on the Web, there are a variety of useful resources available to help along these lines. The following sites are places you can go to learn about making HTML documents.

• Setting Up A Web Site For Your School: An On-line Presentation
  [http://bigdog.fred.net/nhhs/html2/present.htm].
  A site developed by George Cassutto which explains terminology and outlines steps you can take to establish your own web site.

• Classroom Internet Server Cookbook
  [http://web66.coled.umn.edu/Cookbook/contents.html].
  This site contains short on-line modules on setting up your own Mac- or PC-based Web server, and creating HTML pages.

• Beginner's Guide to HTML
  [http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html].
  A good place to start learning about HTML.

• John December's Site
  [http://www.december.com/web/text/index.html].
  A Website with lots of information about the Internet and the World Wide Web. The section on Guides to the Internet/Using the World Wide Web offers information about HTML and how to do HTML programming.

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