Interpreting representations using climate data
The science capability ‘Interpret representations’ encourages students to think about how data is presented, what the representation tells us and how it gets the message across. Visual representations contain literacy and numeracy components that students may need support to understand.
New Zealand’s annual temperature is rising
This graph shows the temperatures from decade to decade and year to year.
Graph by Ministry for the Environment, Stats NZ, and data providers and released under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
In this activity, students observe and interpret graphs from the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ’s Our atmosphere and climate 2020 report. The activity includes discussion questions to help students understand the ways in which the representations present information.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
develop literacy and numeracy skills for interpreting information from graphs
identify the components of a graph
discuss the purpose of the graph.
Download the Word file (see link below).
Related content
The article Our atmosphere and climate – introduction has links to resources that inform students (and the general public) about the state of New Zealand’s climate.
The climate change topic curates all Hub resources. Use the filters at the top of the page to find specific resources.
The ClimateViz citizen science project needs help interpreting climate change graphics to help combat misinformation and support scientific communication.
Related activities
Using infographics challenges students to delve into infographics and how they present science information.
Using weather data challenges students to use long-term weather datasets to create and interpret graphs.
Climate data analysis challenges students to work with long-term weather data using Data Studio.
Acknowledgement
This resource has been produced with the support of the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ. (c) Crown Copyright.
Environmental reporting series
The Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ produce New Zealand’s environmental reporting series. Every 6 months, they report on an aspect of Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment.
