This lesson introduces students to graphing using historic temperatures on Earth.
The lesson includes a teacher guide, a student handout (with a blank graph), and links to the data sources from NASA and National Geographic.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This is a straightforward lesson that teaches students how to graph data and incorporates climate change data.
Additional Prerequisites
You may want to review the NASA link with students before doing the graphing exercise to provide context to the lesson.
Differentiation
This lesson could be used in science classes to introduce greenhouse gases, paleoclimates, the diversity of life on Earth, mass extinction events, or climate modeling.
This lesson could be used in math classes to learn graphing skills in a real-world context.
Students can learn a basic method in climate modeling by analyzing temperature datasets and plotting a graph, indicating scenarios for the pre-industrial era, business-as-usual, and forecasting changes up to 2050. This procedure is valid, and the resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Science and Engineering
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
