Sunday, January 27, 2008

Wishing, Hoping, Praying

My students have taken to our weather unit with a passion I rarely see out of them except when they're talking about video games, the opposite sex, or the latest movie they've seen. They are obsessed with weather reports.

"Mrs. Bluebird, can you show us that weather service site?" they ask nearly every period. So I indulge them and show the National Weather Service page for our town on my big screen. We've spent a lot of time reading weather maps and station models and they can work their way through this page like pros.

"Ah, man, look at that dewpoint. It's not high enough," I can hear one of them exclaim.

"Yeah, the air isn't saturated," someone pipes up. "And if it's not saturated, there's no precipitation."

"And the temperature. It's going to start falling in a few days," another chimes in.

"Yeah, but not too far," another adds.

They discuss cloud cover, air temperature, and dewpoints. They look at high pressure areas and low pressure areas and ponder what, exactly, we can expect in a few days.

It has absolutely nothing to do with my teaching, the quality of my lessons, or the material being presented.

Pure and simple...they are praying for a snow day.

8 comments:

Susan Nations said...

Ahhh snow days...something we do NOT have here in Florida! Our kids pray for Hurricane Days when there's one anywhere in or near our part of the world.

:-) Susan

Kristie Walker said...

That cracks me up. I love it! Reminds me of when I teach the Bill of Rights... when it comes to freedom of speech, they're all perfect students!

Mrs. T said...

I love a snow day! I'm like a kid myself, out of bed, checking the sites to confirm and reconfirm that we get the whole day off. Then it's back to bed for me!

Darren said...

In about 3 weeks my district has Ski Week off! It's officially Presidents' Week, but my nickname for it is more appropriate.

And one of the best classes I ever took in college was meteorology. Everyone likes knowing about the weather!

Kim said...

Hey...they are using their learning in a real world application! You've gotta love that! You go, Girl!

KHB said...

I'm so excited... we just got our first snow day in 15 years. Spending it catching up on, and finding new, edublogs. :)

I noticed that you were linked to me in your sidebar, but that you had my old URL. I'm at http://fullofbees.wordpress.com now. I need to update...

Have a great day!! Good luck with the snowbunnies. :)

Ruth said...

OK, so they want a snow day, but still, YOU taught them how to figure out if there's going to be one or not! That's still pretty impressive, IMO! So I'd say it does have to do with your teaching. :-)

Terrell said...

Just wanted to let you know we linked to this article in the March issue of Learning in the Great Outdoors. Thanks!

http://aloneonalimb.blogspot.com/2008/03/learning-in-great-outdoors-10.html