Year 8 are learning how pressure differences drive wind. Each student opens Windy with the pressure layer showing isobars and the wind particle animation switched off in settings, so the answers cannot be read from the moving streaks, and works through the department's standard chart-reading questions in their books: locate the deepest low over the North Atlantic, read its central pressure, find a high where the isobars are widely spaced, and decide where winds will be strongest from how tightly the isobars are packed. Students zoom and pan to find each feature and write the wind direction around the low using the rule they have been taught. The lesson closes with the classic question, why does wind spiral round a low rather than blow straight into it, which the teacher answers with a short explanation of the Coriolis effect.
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.