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5th grade · Science · Unit 6 of 9

Weather and the Water Cycle

What makes the weather change

What your child practices

How the Sun, air, water and land interact to cause daily weather, the water cycle, tools for measuring weather, and why long-term forecasting is hard.

Alaska content standards learning standard: 5-ESS2-1 · how the air, water and land interact to make weather

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Weather is what the air is like at a certain time and place.
  2. Rain, snow, sleet and hail are all precipitation.
  3. Warm air rises. Low pressure usually brings clouds and rain. High pressure brings clear skies.
  4. A thermometer measures temperature, a rain gauge measures rain and an anemometer measures wind speed.

Example: The air pressure is falling. What weather might come? Low pressure usually brings clouds and precipitation. Answer: cloudy, wet weather

Weather and the Water Cycle in Alaska

In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 6 of 9 in 5th grade Science, after Measuring Matter and before Energy from the Sun.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Which step of the water cycle turns liquid water into water vapor?

    • precipitation
    • evaporation
    • condensation

  2. Question 2

    Rain, snow, sleet and hail are all types of…

    • condensation
    • evaporation
    • precipitation

  3. Question 3

    What is a front in weather?

    • where two air masses meet
    • a kind of snow
    • a very big cloud

  4. Question 4

    Thin, wispy clouds high in the sky are called…

    • nimbus
    • cumulonimbus
    • cirrus

  5. Question 5

    A warm front is when…

    • winds stop
    • warm air moves over cooler air
    • cold air pushes under warm air

  6. Question 6

    A puddle dries up on a sunny day. Where did the water go?

    • into the ground only
    • into the air as water vapor
    • it disappeared

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