An evolving- Wild Weather transformation

A Transformation that is cross-curricular, perfect for all grade levels, and one we repeated, upgraded, and perfected.

This transformation was truly wild. It came to us unexpectedly and was arguably one of our greatest. It required the least amount of money and was one transformation that was not really planned out. Yet, we experienced such positive feedback from it that we had to do it again! This weather transformation was versatile, hit multiple standards, seemed easier than some of our others, and was transferable to cross-curricular content!

While transformations are driven by grade-level content and standards, some transformations can be applicable to any grade level! And this is one of them! Some of you may already know this, but we have taught grade levels from first to fourth grade. So, when we bought transformation materials, we wanted to be able to recycle and repurpose them to another grade level or transformation idea, in order to truly get our money’s worth. The great thing is this transformation consisted of mostly paper! We later invested in hanging raindrops and a rainbow balloon arch, but the whole thing ended up costing us about $25-$35 at the most!

Our weather transformation began in our first-grade classroom. Our upcoming weekly focus in our language arts book was using the story “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”. They paired this story with a plethora of non-fiction weather texts to reinforce some of our non-fiction and text-feature standards. Coincidently it was the month of April, and where we live this means sporadic rain showers, weekly rainbows, occasional tornados, mostly cool winds and a sprinkle of muggy weather and sunshine.

We decided to pair some of our NGSS Science standards with this weather filled week and boom! A whole weather unit was born. Like we said earlier, we have done this weather transformation at least 3 times (one of which was before our social media phase,) and it has taken all those times to truly perfect our weather transformation into what it is today.

With each time, our transformations changed based on time, the number of standards hit, and money used. If we were to rate our weather transformations on a scale from 1-5, we’d have to admit, our first one would be low, but let this be your sign, because you must start somewhere! And that’s why we’re here! Let us help you! We made the mistakes, so you don’t have to! So here is how we rate our weather transformations that have evolved with time and money:

(Our scale is from 1-5. 1 being the lowest or not at all and 5 being the highest or the most).

Take 1: Our first Weather transformation: foodie style!

Rating: 2

Money: $$$$

Time spent: 2

Our first go-around of this weather transformation (which was so long ago we don’t even have pictures of it, here is the year two picture when we just took our weather unit and added the food floaties for that day!) revolved solely around the “Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs” story. Ya’ll already know we are foodies, so we saw this as an opportunity to use and incorporate food into the curriculum! We took a page out of the book and decided to transform the classroom into the town of “Chewandswallow.” We bought food related pool floaties, food themed banners, food erasers, food stuffies and toys and basically grouped all the items in food groups and hung them from the ceiling and placed the gigantic food floaties around the room. We made paper clouds and hung food cutouts from them with fishing line. We’re not going to lie; this transformation was pretty cute. The cost of this transformation was the most, but it required the least amount of work. The academic planning was pretty much laid out for us. We supplemented and added, but it did not require an extensive amount of planning time. We focused on the literary elements of “Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs,” compared the story to our own town, wrote about the food we would want to fall from the sky, and incorporated food throughout the week in science projects, as math manipulatives, and as behavior incentives. This first weather transformation was easy, but expensive and not as involved with activities and standards. The kids did love this room change though…they still come back and reference the giant pizza slice hanging from the ceiling.

Take 2: Our more involved weather transformation: featuring the seasons!

Rating: 3

Money: $

Time spent: 5

The next year, we anticipated this lesson and took a completely different direction. We wanted to continue to use the “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” story, but we decided to use this as an opportunity to focus on weather standards, science standards, researching skills, speaking and listening standards and non-fiction texts. This transformation was based around a weather channel, weather stations, and the 4 seasons: summer, fall, winter, and spring. We covered each corner of the classroom with giant staples of paper that represented each season. This transformation took a whole weekend, mainly because we made each hanging item with large pieces of butcher paper, but also because we had to fish out and recycle some of our previous purchases from the transformations before. However, this did make it cost effective and cost friendly. While we saved the most money for this transformation, it took the longest, covered most of the space, and was very involved. The summer section of the classroom used some of our “paradise party” transformation items and filled the entire space. We put up a sun, bright colored flowers, beach items, and anything that resembled hot weather. The winter corner had snowflakes handing from the ceiling and we recycled our milk jug igloo from our winter transformation and covered the floor in snow. The fall corner was laced with climbing wall trees that had red, orange, and yellow leaves falling from it. In between the fall and spring station there was a weather station set up where the students were going to report the weather, practice speaking skills, and present their weather reports referencing weather tools and new vocabulary from the unit. The spring corner had a giant paper tornado, paper clouds lined the ceiling with raindrops, and a beautiful paper rainbow draped in the middle. We thought that this was one of our most impressive transformations yet! We felt that we hit the most standards with this transformation and were able to focus on many different avenues of learning. We were very proud and eager for the students to participate in an immersive weather classroom experience!

After reading “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” we discussed what severe weather may look like in each season. Each student chose a season that they wanted to study, and they started researching what severe weather in their season looked like and made a google slide presentation. The students’ final project was to create severe weather posters to present to the class with 3 written facts. The students compared and contrasted non-fiction weather books on EPIC and were able to access a plethora of non-fiction texts that they were interested in. In the science station, students learned about weather tools and instruments and found and wrote the definitions of each. Our meteorology “weather station” was accompanied by our own learning pack was complete with vocabulary posters, notes, quizzes, weather maps and weather reporting scripts. The students loved pretending to report the weather and it was a great way to reinforce speaking and listening skills.

Take 3: A more focused take on immersive learning in Language Arts specifically

Rating: 3

Money: $

Time spent: 2

This year we took an incredibly focused approach to this transformation. We spent minimal money, used provided materials from our school, and chose a piece of the room we knew would be the most impactful. With kids, families, and a gajillion other responsibilities we knew we wouldn't have the time or money to do an elaborately wild decorating situation this year.. so we consolidated and honestly it turned out so well! Paper clouds and strands of raindrops hung from the ceiling while blue paper lined the walls. A cheap rainbow balloon garland was the highlight this year -- the kids couldn't get enough of it!

To tie it to our standards we spent two weeks diving into non-fiction text structures-- the topics? Weather of course! It was excellent test prep for our upcoming standardized testing, BUT the immersive environment made the learning impactful not just for the next few weeks.. but hopefully for years to come. We studied content specific vocabulary related to meteorology and the study of weather and then used that knowledge to create our own classroom weather station. It doesn't always work, but whenever it makes sense, we always try to assess in interesting ways so the students can show their learned knowledge through more than just a paper and pencil test. This go around the students got to read a weather map, answer questions, and, using that data, filled in a weather script. They then practiced their lines and we recorded their reports in our weather station! The kids honestly just thought we were having a free day.. but really they were practicing their comprehension skills, vocabulary, and speaking/listening skills.

Overall-- the lesson is this:

You can spend all the money and have a cool transformation. You can spend no money and all the time and have a cool transformation. You can spend very little money AND time and STILL have a cool transformation! Really it's all about your imagination, standards, and interacting with your kids. They won't remember the hours you spent.. because they don't know. They won't remember the money spent.. because they don't know. They will remember your enthusiasm and content you shared. They'll remember walking into a mini wonderland and all the random facts you threw out.. because it made sense, they heard it, they saw it, they acted it out.. they truly experienced the learning. And that's the whole goal here with transformative teaching.

Weather is just one of many transformations we have evolved over the years. Stay tuned for more of our favorites or contact us with any questions!

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