Specially designed scaffolding activities have been constructed to give you practice with the skills and knowledge necessary for completing your project. You decide which activities will best help you with the project you've chosen. For example, if your project was to "determine why one station was much warmer than at a second station less than 300 miles away", a sequence of possible scaffolding activities to support this topic could be:

Scaffolding Activity Sequence for Project Example: Anatomy of a Cyclone Since this is a case study of a cyclone, you need to learn the different parts that make up a cyclone. Air Masses and Cyclones Different air masses play different roles in the weather and whichever air mass a given station is located in will have a significant impact on the weather conditions at that station.

By completing these activities you'd learn that the primary reason why there was such a dramatic difference between the stations was that each station was located in a different air mass. The purpose of the scaffolding activities is to provide the knowledge and skills necessary for completing a project. A list of scaffolding activities (plus descriptions) relevant to this case study is available below.

Suggested Scaffolding Activities: Atmospheric Pressure Air Masses Precipitation Along Fronts Midlatitude Cyclones Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Surface Observation Symbols Weather Symbols Forecasting Temperatures Forecasting Precipitation

Items to Complete:
- Document what type of data you collected, for which cities and for what times.
- State your project topic and why you chose that topic.
- All relevant scaffolding activity materials and describe what you learned from them.
- Show key data and images that support your conclusions.

choosing a topic

Terms for using data resources. CD-ROM available. Credits and Acknowledgments for WW2010. Department of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

meteorologist