This presentation, part of a workshop for science educators at National Science Teachers Association conferences in 2013, describes interdisciplinary classroom activities that get students thinking about how weather events are covered by news media.

1. Weather Headlines:
A Tool for Science Learning
Becca Hatheway and Lisa Gardiner
Spark – UCAR Science Education
spark.ucar.edu/workshops

2. National Center for Atmospheric Research
– Researching the atmosphere, weather, climate
– A non-profit research lab, funded primarily by NSF.
Spark - UCAR Science Education
• Goal: to increase public understanding of
atmospheric science and engage communities
with research.
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Sharing science content, activities, and teacher PD.
Providing education at NCAR in Boulder, CO.
Offering research internships for college students.
Working with communities that are partnering with
researchers.

3. Weather is always making headlines.
• Weather is…
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accessible science.
visible science.
happening now!
always changing.
in the headlines.

4. Weather affects everyone.
• Weather impacts daily life.
• It’s also relevant to national
security and global politics.
• Cross cutting between social
studies, science, and
geography.

5. About climate change & weather events:
• When an extreme weather event
occurs, people ask whether it was due to
climate change.
• No single weather event is due to climate
change. All weather events are affected by
climate change, some more than others.

6. The weather on steroids
An analogy…
Climate warming is changing
the weather like steroids
change a baseball player.
http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/attribution/steroids-baseball-climate-change

7. Weather events are not equally affected by warming.
We are still learning how they are, or are not, affected.

8. Weather Headlines Workshop Outline
• Activity #1: Weather in the News
– Compare stories about weather events from different
media sources and different perspectives
• Hurricane Sandy
• Joplin Tornado
• Snowmageddon
• Activity #2: Tracking Hurricane News
– Make a timeline based on news coverage of Hurricane
Irene as it moved up the East Coast in 2011

9. Activity #1:
Weather in the News
Snowmageddon , Washington, D.C., 2010
http://spark.ucar.edu/activity/weather-news

10. Weather isn’t covered the same way in
different news sources
• What’s the perspective?
– Local news versus national news
• What’s the point of view?
– Reporting versus opinion/editorial
• What’s the focus?
– People focus versus science focus

11. Oct 28, 2012, front page of Huffington Post

12. Oct 28, 2012, front page of The New York Times

13. Activity Instructions:
Weather in the News
• Each small group reads the articles in their
case study (there will be three case studies in
the room)
• To conserve workshop time, skim the first side
of the worksheet and focus on the four
questions on the reverse.
• As a group, record your answers to those
questions on chart paper and post on the wall.

14. Activity #2:
Tracking Hurricane News
http://spark.ucar.edu/activity/tracking-hurricane-news

15. Tracking Hurricane News
1. Each student reads a news story
about Hurricane Irene.
2. Students present information from
their articles to the rest of the class.
3. Each student constructs a timeline
to describe the hurricane’s story
over time and across geographic
area based on all the news stories.

16. Meet Hurricane Irene
• On Aug 20, 2011 Irene
became a tropical
storm
• Strengthened to a
Category 3 storm
• Made landfall many
times along its path
(Puerto Rico, Bahamas, North
Carolina, New York and New
Jersey)

18. Activity Instructions:
Tracking Hurricane News
• Objective: Create a timeline of Hurricane Irene
through quotes from the news about how the
storm affected people and places.
– (note: we are keeping it simple for the sake of time!)
1. Read an article and take notes on Worksheet 1.
Can you summarize it in one sentence?
2. Choose a quote from the article that interests
you. Add it to the timeline with the date and
location of your news story.

19. Other ideas for including weather
news in the classroom
• Students investigate how news describes people during a
storm.
– Who is involved when a storm hits? (forecasters, emergency
managers, government officials, community members)
– What’s did they have to say?
• Classroom debate: Should winter storms have names?
– The National Weather Service doesn’t name them. The Weather
Channel does.
– Have students research why storms are named, and decide whether
it’s helpful for winter storms as it is for hurricanes.

20. Thanks!
• Lisa Gardiner lisagard@ucar.edu
• Becca Hatheway hatheway@ucar.edu
• For workshop resources, visit Weather Headlines
at spark.ucar.edu/workshops