To your students, this time of year probably means new friends, new books, and new and exciting adventures. But to meteorologists, the late summer signifies an adventure of another kind. It's the peak time of the Atlantic hurricane season. This week, Education World presents activities designed to help your students understand this powerful force of nature.
Most residents of the United States will never experience a hurricane first hand. But all will hear, at some time in their lives, news reports about the destruction caused by one of these violent storms. Just what are hurricanes? How do they form? Who do they affect? What damage do they cause? The information and activities below will help you answer those questions, as well as provide some exciting additions to your curriculum.
Hurricane is, in fact, just one name for the kind of storm scientists refer to as a strong tropical cyclone.
When the same kind of storm occurs in the western North Pacific Ocean, it's called a typhoon. In the southwest
Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, the storms are referred to as cyclones. (Students can learn more at
How
They Are Named Differently in Different Parts of the World.)
Tropical cyclones develop when thunderstorms form over ocean water that has reached a temperature of about 80
degrees Fahrenheit. The conditions required for tropical cyclones, or Hurricanes,
to develop occur most often in late summer and early fall. An average of nine named tropical storms develop each
year in the Atlantic basin, six of which become hurricanes. Of those, two are likely to become intense hurricanes
and cause extensive damage.
The following activities will help your students understand hurricanes and appreciate their power and consequences.
The activities are grouped under two headings, Hurricane Activities for All Students and Hurricane
Activities for Upper Elementary Students and Above.
Language arts -- alphabetical order. Provide students with a scrambled list of World-Wide
Tropical Cyclone Names from this year's hurricane season and have them put the names in alphabetical order.
Which letters do not have an associated hurricane name? You might want to explain that tropical storm names are
assigned by the World Meteorological Organization.
More language arts -- alphabetical order. Ask students to work in small groups to create their own alphabetical
list of names they'd attach to hurricanes -- if they were responsible for naming them!
Science -- make a weather station. Encourage younger students to visit Making
a Weather Station and help them follow the directions to create a classroom weather station.
Geography -- track a hurricane. Provide students with a Tracking
Map and invite them to track the path of a current storm or a storm from a previous year.
Math -- solve word problems. Encourage students to visit Disaster
Math and solve the problems. For very young students, use these word problems as a guide to creating your
own.
Hands-on science -- making lightning. Lightning is caused by static electricity stored in rain clouds.
When the clouds have too much stored static electricity, a spark results --- lightning! Students can demo how
lightning is formed by tearing a small square of paper into tiny, confetti-like pieces. Mext, take a comb and
hold it near the confetti. Nothing happens. Then they can briskly run the comb through their hair. Hold the "charged"
comb over the confetti. What happens? You can't see the static electricity you've created but you can see its
results. In what other ways can you create static electricity?
Math -- make a graph. Hurricanes cause millions of dollars in damages each year. Invite students to create
a bar or picture graph to show the costs of Atlantic hurricane damage over the decades. Data is provided below.
(Data source: NOAA, http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/deadly/Table13.htm)
| 1920s |
$2 billion |
| 1930s |
$6 billion |
| 1940s |
$6 billion |
| 1950s |
$13 billion |
| 1960s |
$23 billion |
| 1970s |
$21 billion |
| 1980s |
$21 billion |
| 1990s |
$78 billion |
Home connection -- health and safety. Print copies of the Hurricane
Kit Checklist and send a copy home with each student. Have students include a letter explaining specific concerns
they have regarding storms and encourage them to discuss both their concerns and the checklists with their families.
Hands-on science -- demonstrate the water cycle. Use this experiment to demonstrate the water cycle.
(The sun changes water to water vapor, which rises, cools, and condenses to form clouds. Then cool air meets the
clouds, creating rain, sleet, or snow.) Have students fill jars half-full of water. Cover the jar openings with
plastic wrap and use rubber bands to seal. Place the jars on a sunny windowsill. Ask: What happened? Why? What
signs did you see of condensation? evaporation? How does this experiment demonstrate the water cycle?
Art/Language arts -- create a class joke book. Invite each student to create a humorous picture to illustrate
this joke: Why won't weather forecasters tell each other jokes?
They don't want to laugh up a storm! Choose the best illustration of this joke to be the cover of a class
joke book. Then invite each student to choose a favorite riddle or joke to illustrate and to add to the class
joke book.
Games -- challenge a computer. Invite students to explore probability as they play the Water,
Wind, and Earth game against the computer.
Geography -- read a world map. Encourage students to visit Tropical
Storm Tracks and explore the areas listed to find current tropical storms. On a world map, help students locate
the seven areas where tropical storms occur and ask them to identify countries that might be affected by storms
in each of those areas. Students might also determine, for each area, whether storms there are called typhoons,
cyclones, or hurricanes.
Science -- create a chart. Encourage students to go to Davis Weather Instruments' Virtual
Weather Station and explore the company's VantagePro product. Help students create a chart of the data provided
for several different weather situations. Then ask them to hypothesize about the correlation between wind-chill
temperature and wind speed, humidity level and rainfall amounts, and so on. Have students record weather information
given for their area for a week or two and then test their hypotheses.
Social studies -- write a press release. Encourage older students to complete the Handle
a Hurricane lesson plan, at which they will learn about hurricanes, explore social factors, and decide whether
to evacuate Pensacola Beach, Florida, as a hurricane approaches.
Writing -- create a newspaper. Arrange students into groups and provide each group with a list of Retiring
Names of the Worst Hurricanes. Ask each group to choose from the list a hurricane that affected the United
States, research the hurricane, and then create a newspaper about it. Encourage students to name their newspapers
appropriately based on the hurricane's path, to accurately represent costs according to the actual year in which
the hurricane occurred, and to include graphics, advertisements, and cartoons that reflect the concerns of area
residents.
Art -- create a diorama. Arrange students into five groups and assign each group a hurricane category,
from 1 to 5. Then have students create a hurricane of the assigned category. You might want to explain that a
Category 2 hurricane has 10 times the destructive power of a Category 1 hurricane, a Category 3 hurricane has
50 times the destructive power of a Category 1 hurricane, a Category 4 has 100 times the power, and a Category
5 has 250 times the destructive power. Then ask each group to create a diorama showing the damage to a building
that might result from their hurricane.
Geography -- learning latitude and longitude. Introduce the Interactive
Tracking Map. Then have students explore another Interactive
Tracking Map and click Quick Plot to practice plotting their own coordinates. Then provide students
with a map of the United States or the world, give them several sets of coordinates, and ask them to find the
locations on the map.
Science -- take a quiz. Encourage students to take an interactive quiz to learn what they know -- and
don't know. They can use one or more of the following online resources:
Math -- calculate inflation. Ask students to go to Stormfax
Weather Services, click Hurricanes, then United States Hurricane Statistics (1900-1997), scroll
down to U.S. Hurricane Statistics: 1990-1997, and explore both Top 25 Costliest /actual $$ and Top 25
Costliest /adjusted $$. Then have students calculate the rate of inflation between each hurricane and 1997.
ADDITIONAL HURRICANE RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET
Science Friday Kids' Connection:
Hurricane!
Middle school science teachers will find lots of great material here for teaching about hurricanes.
Stormfax Weather Services
Provides an extensive array of weather information for the United States and the world, including a daily weather
map and satellite images.
The National Hurricane Center
Everything you ever wanted to know about hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical cyclones.
The National Weather Service
Interactive Weather Information Network
Provides weather and tracking information for many different kinds of storms, including hurricanes.
The USA Today
Hurricane Index A good source for clearly written hurricane information and news.
South Florida Sun Sentinel Hurricane Information
Includes a timeline of fascinating hurricane history, a quiz, an interactive map, and more.
Hurricanes From the University
of Illinois
This site provides lots of hurricane information accompanied by clear explanations and many definitions.
The Image Catalog
Satellite pictures of hurricanes from NASA and The
Movie Catalog
movie clips.
Severe Weather -- Hurricanes
Provides an activity your students can use to track and analyze a hurricane.
FEMA For Kids
Provides storm drawings, games, a 1998 hurricane forecast, and hurricane videos.
Hurricanes: How They Work
and What They Do
A variety of basic information about hurricanes.
Hurricanes Links from Clemson University
to sites containing hurricane information, safety tips, and activities.
Hurricane: Storm Science from the
Miami Museum of Science
A great deal of information for younger students, including directions for making weather instruments, a healing
quilt for storm survivors, letters from storm survivors, and statements from a family that lived through Hurricane
Andrew.
Article by Linda Starr
Education World®
Copyright © 2008 Education World
Originally published 09/07/1998
Links last updated 07/17/2008
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