Our laptops are out of commission today - they are being "fixed" with a script from our ICTservices technicians. Unfortuantely, this means that the suite is out of action too (with wired connections in there, it's a quicker job than being wireless) leaving the school computerless.
So today in maths, I set the children an analogue challenge related to our Eco Week. I asked them to find out whether or not the temperature is rising as a result of Global Warming, as is reported constantly on the news. I presented them with 30 years of average monthly temperatures from the MetOffice website (1979 - 2008), and gave each child a particular year from that period for them to work on.
We discussed how we would create the chart, the need for all charts to be created identically beacuse we planned to join them up at the end, how we would record the data (a cross and then lines linking the crosses) and the importance of leaving a "tab" at the right side to allow the next years graph to be stuck to it.
The children got straight into the task, and were fully engaged with their data set.
Once completed, all charts were sliced (to remove the excess) and then combining began.
(This photo contains the data from 1979 - 1999 - there is still another ten years to add to it - we just ran out of room in the class!)
And the result of the initial question I asked? They couldn't see an INCREASE in temperature that was noticable over the years, but they did see that the winter "dip" was less severe, and some worked out that meant that it was getting less cold each winter. They didn't however link that to Global Warming, as it was in the winter - not the summer. Still some work to do on how Climate Change affects us ALL year round me thinks!
