OpenSciEd Unit 6.3 · Lesson 16 · 16.A
Look for: how a warm air mass and a cold air mass inter…
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
16.A Develop and use models to observe and describe the complex patterns of change that occur when warm and cold air masses interact in the atmosphere.
What to look / listen for
how a warm air mass and a cold air mass interact along a front, specifically how the resulting lift of the warm air over the cold air occurs at this boundary
how warm air pushed upward cools, and if there is water vapor present in the warm air, this would condense, causing clouds and precipitation to form
What to do
As students work, walk around and listen in on their conversations and check their work on Warm and Cold Water Interactions. If students are struggling to find certain key ideas, you can try the following:
Revisit the demonstration by watching the video taken during the demonstration. (See Advance preparation.) This gives students an additional opportunity to look for things that they might not have noticed during the actual demonstration.
Use questions to guide them to think about ideas that they are struggling to figure out. Here are some examples:
What happens to air when it is warmed up?
What happens to air when it is cooled down?
What have we learned about the interactions between warm and cold air from previous lessons?
What happens to warm, humid air when it is cooled?