THE NUCLEUS
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Climatographs  Reimagined

Climatographs Reimagined

I've never really liked teaching climatographs, although they're part of the Science 10 curriculum.  So here's an activity that has students create and learn to read a climatograph, while introducing the concept of biomes in a logical way.

Downloads:
○ Grid Paper (print on 11x17)
​○ Student Handout

Instructions:
1. Have students fill in the first page of the student guide for an assigned city.  (I use 12 groups, each with their own city).  The will use the worldclimate.com website to find precipitation and temperature.  The data is old, but comprehensive and relatively easy to parse (future: find a more current dataset).

Picture


A useful list of cities (don’t tell students what the biome is):

Tundra:

  • Inuvik, Canada
  • Anadyr, Russia
Grassland:
  • Calgary, Canada
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
Desert:
  • Lima, Peru
  • Alice Springs, Australia

Taiga/Boreal Forest:
  • Oslo, Norway
  • Flin Flon, Canada
Deciduous Forest:
  • Vancouver, Canada
  • Casablanca, Morocco
Rainforest:
  • Manaus, Brazil
  • Tacloban, Philippines

​2. Once they have completed their table, have them build the climatograph for their city on a 11x17 piece of paper (“grid paper handout.docx”), and tape it randomly to the front whiteboard.
3. Once all climatographs are on the board, have students order them from low precipitation (left) to high precipitation (right).  I like to sit down and make students do this, where each student can only get up once and can only move 2 climatographs.
4. Once students/teacher are satisfied with the order, add a y-axis label (temperature lowàhigh), and have them move the cities up/down on the basis of their average temperature.
5. I like to come along now and add stickies with the biome labels, having students help assign them to the correct areas.
 
6. Then we reference a generalized grid, like the one below, to see how the generalizations align with the decisions we make, and discuss how areas can transition between biomes as a result of climate change.
 
7. Leaving climatographs on the board, have students answer the questions on their handout in their groups.

Picture
reuben.mahaffy@psd.ca
(c) 2022

  • Home
  • Courses
    • Science 10
    • Chemistry 20
    • Chemistry 30
    • Biology 20
    • Biology 30
    • Science 10-4
    • Moodle
  • Chemistry Labs
    • Micro Mole Rockets
    • Climatographs Reimagined
  • Talks
    • Storytelling in Science Education
    • 3D Printed Manipulatives
    • Schooled by COVID
    • Previous Talks
  • YouTube