Pick a time of day for your class to observe the weather. Do the observations at the same time each day for consistency of the data the students collect.
Place a thermometer outside where the students can view it when it is time to observe the weather. Attach thermometers with suction cups to the outside of the window if your classroom is above the ground level.
Keep journals for an entire month in which students make detailed observations about each day's weather. The students should record the temperature and observations such as whether it is sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, rainy, foggy or windy. Students should also record other weather-related observations, such as if the leaves are changing colors in autumn or trees are budding in the spring.
Provide the students with graph paper at the end of the month. Tell them to write along the bottom of the paper the different weather they observed during the month.
Color in one block for each day that represents the weather observed. For example, if there were 10 sunny days, the students should color in 10 blocks above the sunny-day label on the graph paper. This creates a bar graph of the weather observed over the course of the month.
Write the day of the month in each colored-in block with a marker. For example, if the third of the month was rainy, on one of the rainy-day blocks write in "3rd." Repeat for all observed days.
Create a line graph for tracking temperature over the course of the month. Write in the dates for all the days observations were taken on the horizontal axis and the range of temperatures for the month on the vertical axis. For each observed day, have the students place a dot above the date that is the same height as the temperature recorded for that day. Then have the students connect each dot with a ruler.
Compare the graphs to make predictions about the weather. For example, have the students compare the temperature on sunny days with that on rainy days. Ask them to predict the temperature if sunny skies are forecast for the next day.