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Internet Scavenger Hunt -- The Weather Channel

Many of our students are used to instantaneous gratification that modern conveniences offer. That is why they tend to get frustrated when their research does not produce immediate results. The truth is that good academic research takes discipline and perseverance, qualities our students don’t always possess. That is why I use Internet scavenger hunts with my students. I want them to experience the excitement of discovery as well as the frustration of failure, not for failure’s sake, but to learn how to adjust and change research techniques in order to reach a goal. 

I also enjoy the Weather Channel Home Page, which is a companion to the popular cable television station (my 3 year old daughter calls this “Daddy’s channel”).  Weather patterns and predictions fascinate me.

Of course, the logical next step was using the Weather Channel Home Page (http://www.weather.com) as the starting point for an Internet scavenger hunt. The answers to the following questions may all be found at weather.com. Feel free to create your own questions to adapt searches to meet some your curricular goals. For instance, if you are studying Africa in geography class, you may wish to write some questions that will focus your student’s attention on weather in Africa.

Here are some sample questions:

1. What is the current weather in Timbuktu?
2. Is rain predicted in the Southeast U.S. today or tomorrow?
3. What’s the travel weather like in the Northeast U.S.?
4. What’s the lowest temperature ever recorded in Denver, CO?
5. What’s the highest temperature recorded in Los Angeles, CA, on this date?
6. Which city has greater annual precipitation, Seattle, Washington, or Houston, Texas?
7. What is the Celsius equivalent of 78 degrees Fahrenheit?
8. Use the weather glossary to find out what “palouser” means.
9. How do you say “Weather Maps” in Spanish?

Here are some helpful hints for creating and using scavenger hunts in the classroom:

• Remind students early and often that when you are researching a question you are unlikely to find the answer on the first attempt. Good research involves a great deal of trial and error. DON’T GET FRUSTRATED.
• Good scavenger hunts connect to the classroom curriculum in some way.
• Scavenger hunts don’t need to use only one site. For instance, you could create a scavenger hunt and then allow students to follow any links from a children’s search site, such as Yahooligans! (http://www.yahooligans.com) to find the answer.
• If at all possible, create the links to the websites you wish to use in the scavenger hunt ahead of time for your students. This will avoid the time-consuming problem of students spending half of the class period typing in an Internet address correctly.
• This is a great activity for a one-computer classroom. You can give each student the same amount of time to complete the hunt and see how far he or she gets. Or you may allow each student as much time as he/she needs to complete the hunt. The choice is yours.

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