Teachers’ Corner
Everything in the Discovery Zone is free to use in your classroom or at home: no ads, no sign-up, nothing to download. Here’s how the pieces fit together, where to find real local data, and other great places to learn.
✨ On this page
By subject · Real local data · Learning from mistakes · Other great places to learn · Spot a mistake?
📚 By subject
- Weather and climate: Weather School (free lessons with quizzes), the hands-on Forecaster Track (read weather maps and make real forecasts, in three levels), Weather Wonders (chinooks, hail, tornadoes and more) and Hands-On Weather Science.
- Building and measuring: Make It! crafts, including a wind vane and rain gauge, and the build-your-own weather station project.
- Electricity and electronics: Electronics School, a step-by-step course with a “For teachers and parents” section on each project.
- Space: Sky & Space: the night sky, the Moon, meteor showers, eclipses and spotting the space station.
- Language and culture: Say It in Another Language: friendly phrases in 21 languages spoken in southern Alberta, with audio.
- Life skills and safety: knots, a home-alone weather plan and emergency kits.
- Word play: Kids’ Word Fun and puzzles.
🧭 Weather learning path
From wondering about the weather to measuring it yourself. Any of these makes a great science fair project: measure, keep a record, and compare with a real station.
- 🌪 Weather Wonders
Chinooks, hail, tornadoes and more: what the weather can do - ✂ Make simple instruments
A pinwheel, wind vane and pop bottle rain gauge - 🔬 Hands-On Weather Science
Experiments to try at home and outside - 📡 Build your own weather station
A real electronics science project - 🏫 Weather School: Observing the Weather
How real weather observers measure - 🌳 Forecaster Track
Read real weather maps and make your own forecast - 💻 Weather software
The programs behind a real station and forecast - 📈 Compare with a real station
Live readings from West Lethbridge Weather
📈 Real local data for real lessons
Our sister site, West Lethbridge Weather, has run a home weather station in Lethbridge since 2007. Students can use its real numbers for science, math and data lessons:
- Live readings, updated to the minute: graph a day’s temperature, or watch a chinook arrive.
- Monthly climate report: compare this month with past years, find the averages and the extremes.
- West side vs the airport: why two thermometers in the same city disagree.
- Pair a home-made rain gauge or wind vane with the station’s readings, and ask: how close did we get, and why not closer?
🔍 Learning from mistakes
Real science is full of mistakes that get noticed, checked and fixed. A few places on our sites make that easy to show:
- Forecasts miss. Our Forecast Scorecard shows how the local forecast actually did, misses included. Ask students to find a bad day and work out what the forecast got wrong.
- Measurements disagree. Two good instruments rarely read exactly the same. That’s a lesson in where you put an instrument, not proof that one is broken.
- Circuits don’t work the first time. Every Electronics School project ends with an “It doesn’t work?” section, and The Fix-It Challenge is all about finding the fault.
- Mix-ups get sorted out. Weather Wonders clears up common confusions: a funnel cloud versus a tornado, a dust devil versus a tornado, hoar frost versus rime, and why a tsunami isn’t weather at all.
🌎 Other great places to learn
We’re not the only place to learn, and we don’t try to be. These are free, trusted Canadian sources we lean on ourselves:
- Science K to 6, Alberta Education: the curriculum and program supports.
- Weather resource centre, Environment and Climate Change Canada.
- Climate change resources for educators, Government of Canada.
- Let’s Talk Science: free STEM lessons and activities for Canadian classrooms.
- Space resources for educators, Canadian Space Agency.
✍ Spot a mistake?
We check our facts against trusted sources, but we’re human. If you or your students find something on any of our pages that’s wrong, out of date or unclear, please tell us in the comment box below. Include the page, and what you think it should say. Your note comes privately to us; it isn’t posted on the page. We check every report against a trusted source and fix what needs fixing.
Finding a mistake and reporting it is exactly what scientists do. We’ll thank you for it.
Stories and sayings for class
- Story Time: five weather stories (ages 4 to 12), each with a read-aloud button and a “What really happens” science box.
- Build-a-Story: students pick the weather, place and sidekick, and the page writes a printable story with real science at the end. Nothing is sent or saved.
- Weather Sayings: True or False? Test old weather lore against the science, plus jokes and riddles.
Earth Explorers for class
Hands-on pages with an activity, a quick quiz and teaching notes on each: map work, compass and orienteering, rocks and minerals, how our coulees were made, dinosaurs of Alberta, wildlife of the coulees (including rattlesnake safety) and bugs and insects. Start at Earth Explorers.