This Severe Weather Lesson Plan Will Wow Your Students!

The diagram above shows some of the items used in this severe weather lesson plan. They include:

color digital resource for devices
printable resource
severe weather worksheet
severe weather objectives to post on the board
severe weather vocabulary for word wall
differentiated review questions

Severe Weather Lesson Plan: Hurricanes

The picture on the right shows the severe weather lesson page I use when introducing hurricanes. It includes the updated version of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale for students to study.

This resource also shows a map of where these tropical storms have different names. They learn that storms in the Atlantic and western Pacific are considered hurricanes, while the same storms in the Indian Ocean are called Cyclones. Finally, storms that occur in the eastern Pacific Ocean are referred to as typhoons.

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A Good Time to Study Hurricanes is During Hurricane Season

Even if you aren’t currently teaching about severe weather, don’t pass up a great learning opportunity for your students! Here are some quick activities you can do to help students learn about these incredible storms during a hurricane.

Find the path or “track” the hurricane will take. First, provide students with a map of the U.S. and have then draw the path. Students can predict which states will be affected or if the storm will veer off course.
Predict when the storm will build up to a hurricane or be downgraded to a tropical storm or depression. Discuss why storms get weaker when they reach land.
Have students pick a state that was affected by the storm. They can create a weather report for that state and present it to the class as a meteorologist.
Students can research how storms are named. Find out the next two or three names of future storms.

Severe Weather Lesson Plan: Thunderstorms

Oftentimes, my sixth graders don’t know what thunder is. I play this up by asking what they know about thunder. I always tell them what I heard as a kid – God bowling, angels moving furniture, etc. Then, I ask for the tales they have heard about what thunder is. Many explain thunder as clouds bumping together, and other funny explanations that make us laugh.

Finally, I reveal to them that thunder and lightning are actually one and the same and I’m not going to lie – it pretty much blows their minds. I then explain that thunder is the sound lightning makes. We discuss this at length, and talk about being able to hear a little static electricity shock. This is just a smaller version of of lightning. Next, we discuss the difference between a close sound of thunder (crack!) and a far away sound (roll). This is because sound is slower than light and it takes a while to reach us.

Severe Weather Lesson Plan: Tornadoes

At this point, I like to have my students draw a thunderstorm scene. They illustrate the cumulonimbus clouds, and add thunder and lightning and illustrate what is happening. In this severe weather lesson, we read about how the cumulonimbus cloud is a violent place that creates static electricity. In their drawings, they draw the positive and negative charges, along with the lightning strikes and the “boom” of the thunder!

We are often spared from the experience of tornadoes in our part of the world. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we have never had one. In fact, a tornado devastated an area less than an hour from our school district. But, these weather events are definitely rare.

Students are always eager to learn about the circumstances that need to happen for a tornado to occur. They are amazed that more tornadoes happen in the U.S. than in any other part of the world!

We use this lesson to sum up our discussion about tornadoes and to discuss the Fujita Scale. Similar to the Saffir-Simpson Scale, the Fujita Scale was recently updated. Currently, the new scale is called the Enhanced Fujita Scale. It measures 28 different damage indicators of a tornado.

Finally, students are encouraged to compare and contrast the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale with the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

Tip: Continue your tornado discussion by asking your students how engineers build houses that are able to withstand the destructive force of a tornado. What would it look like? Find a YouTube video showing the destruction of a tornado. How could they build a house that survived? What would it have to be built out of?

Finish With an Extreme Weather Worksheet FREEBIE

In order to reinforce these three types of extreme weather, I use this worksheet as shown on the right. It hits the three topics previously discussed: hurricanes, tornadoes and thunderstorms.

Supplement with This Website

Visit Scijinks.gov with your students. This site shows live pictures of extreme weather that you can show to your students.

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