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LHS Harmon students learn about wind currents
From staff reports
Freshmen in world geography at Lewisville High School Harmon campus recently engaged in hands-on learning. After learning about wind currents in the classroom, they worked in collaborative groups to plan a balloon launch and hypothesized which direction the wind would carry the balloons. Not only did they plan to launch balloons, they decided to attach letters to the balloons in hopes of learning where the balloons travelled from the person who found them.
"Students became involved not only in wind prediction, but how many balloons it would take for their letters to fly - Could they include an envelope and it still fly? Should they just use a teacher email and a note instead of a letter?," said teacher Erika Lowery. "It developed into quite a discovery lesson."
With their planning complete, all world geography students went outside to release their balloons at the same time. During the release, they noted wind direction and whether or not their collaborative prediction was accurate.
"In the future, students will use Google Earth to locate the cities where the balloons travelled and measure the distance travelled," Lowery said. "So far we have received letters from as far away as Allen, Rockwall and Carrollton. It was really exciting to see the students working together and taking charge of their own learning."
1
Updated 9/28/12
"Students became involved not only in wind prediction, but how many balloons it would take for their letters to fly - Could they include an envelope and it still fly? Should they just use a teacher email and a note instead of a letter?," said teacher Erika Lowery. "It developed into quite a discovery lesson."
With their planning complete, all world geography students went outside to release their balloons at the same time. During the release, they noted wind direction and whether or not their collaborative prediction was accurate.
"In the future, students will use Google Earth to locate the cities where the balloons travelled and measure the distance travelled," Lowery said. "So far we have received letters from as far away as Allen, Rockwall and Carrollton. It was really exciting to see the students working together and taking charge of their own learning."
1
Updated 9/28/12
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