Final Report - December, 2003

We are students in grade three at Thorndale Elementary school in Pierrefonds, Quebec. We worked on this weather project in our English Language Arts and Math classes.

During the project, groups of students in our class were assigned to a different day of the week. Each day we used our weather chart to forecast, predict and measure or observe the weather. The assigned group would go to our Magic Garden where we keep our outdoor thermometer and they would come back to report on their findings. Using the local daily newspaper, the group would research the weather news and the amount of sunlight for our area. The newspaper gave us this information in hours and minutes so we had to calculate the hours to minutes.

We used a world map from our agendas to locate different schools that participated in this project. We learned about the equator and the north and south hemispheres. We disccovered that one half of the Earth is always closer to the sun which affects the length of the day in different parts of the world. We also noticed that the countries closest to the equator have warmer temperatures.

Some of the other things we learned while doing this project were:
- N E S W directions on a map
- use of the thermometer
- latitude and longitude
- location of different countries in the world
- equator and prime meridian

The next time we would want to use the world weather forecast to compare different parts of the world, like northern Asia, northern Europe, other South American countries, as well as those in different parts of Africa and Canada.

Thanks,

Christiane Laframboise, Thorndale School

Have a good day.

E-mail: claframboise@lbpearson.ca