Reading Weather Maps

Do you teach weather maps? Middle school students love learning about weather – it’s fun, practical, and easy for them if they get enough practice. An important skill is being able to read weather maps. My “Reading Weather Maps” resource is a printable or digital tool that many teachers have used to help their middle school students understand how to use the symbols on a weather map to predict the weather.

NGSS ESS2-5 asks students to be able to “Collect data to provide evidence for how the motions and complex interactions of air masses result in change in weather conditions.” It’s also an important life skill to be able to read a weather map.

To begin this unit, students first learn what the various weather symbols mean.

By learning the symbols for high pressure, low pressure, cold front, warm front, occluded front and stationary front, students can begin to read weather maps to form weather  predictions. Lots of practice helps here – I use maps with symbols and ask students to predict the weather before each type of front, after each type of front, and while each type of front is passing through.

Teachers who have downloaded this resource tell me:

• “AWESOME resource to go along with our unit of study.”
• “Amazing resources as a summative for this section of the Weather Unit!”
• “This resource was helpful and time saving!”
• “This was very helpful in teaching weather maps…it also gave my students great practice using/reading weather maps!”

One teacher used this resource for a demo lesson for an interview. She said “I was a little lost on preparing a sample lesson revolving around weather! This was perfect in teaching me what I needed to know!”

Click here to buy your  Reading Weather Maps resource!