Mrs. Vultaggio's 8th grade classes and Mrs. Vultaggio's and Ms. Cohen's Science Class took weather observations on October 31st.

NYS Physical Setting Skill # 9 states that students should be able to "measure weather variables such as wind speed and direction, relative humidity, barometric pressure, etc."

On Friday, October 28th, students built instruments or learned how to use school-owned weather instruments. Then on Monday, October 31st students took weather observations. Before we went outside, students explained and demonstrated to the class what weather instrument they were using, the weather variable it measured, and how the instrument worked. Weather variables measured included temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, cloud types, and cloud speed. After they took their own readings, they joined other groups to learn about the other instruments.

While we were outside, students saw, from a distance, our school's weather station located on top of the roof. Once we returned, we compared our observations with the weather station's reading, by using the achieve.weatherbug.com website. For some classes, our results were surprising accurate. For others, more practice or more accurate instruments are needed.

Mrs. Vultaggio and Ms. Cohen felt this was a valuable lesson in eighth grade science. Students became real-life weather observers. Instruments that were previously just seen in pictures now became usable instruments to learn how to use and interpret.