AN INQUIRY-BASED LESSON FOR TEACHING THE DEFINITION OF CLIMATE
To help meet this need, we developed an inquiry lesson based on Sawyer et al.’s (2005) activity for plate tectonics. In our jigsaw lesson, students are placed in small groups and given a world map illustrating the global annual average for one climate-related variable (precipitation, temperature, sea-level air pressure, biologic productivity, or topography). Each group divides their data into 3-5 categories, describes each category, and summarizes their work on a blank world map. Students then reorganize into regional groups containing one member from each type of global data. Each group then identifies commonalities among their datasets for a specific region or continent (e.g. North America or Africa) and defines 3-5 new categories for the combined data. Each regional group then shares their findings with the class using an overhead transparency, before the instructor leads a discussion of the factors that produce regional climate differences. The lesson ends with students applying their new understanding to additional climate-related topics such as the movement of ocean currents.
We piloted this lesson in a course for future elementary teachers with one section as a control. The students who used our lesson accurately recreated a simplified version of Koppen’s climate classification. Preliminary data show no difference in answers to multiple-choice questions regarding climate, however students who completed our lesson provided longer, more detailed responses to open-ended questions than students from the lecture based control lesson. Originally, topography was included as one of the global datasets but data suggest that it would work better as a follow-up activity. More assessment is needed to identify the effectiveness of this lesson.
Sawyer et al. (2005). A Data Rich Exercise for Discovering Plate Boundary Processes. JGE, 53, 65-74.