Climate Change and Excel

The 6th Grade Pre-Algebra 6 class did a project in Excel that examined temperature change in certain cities over the span of the last 50 years. They used a formula to convert the Fahrenheit readings to Centigrade and then applied several other formulas, such as mode, median and average (to arrive at the mean). The students graphed the temperature change and then added a trendline. Later on they inserted a histogram from the Data Analysis Tools. Finally, they went to Google Earth, found the city that they were researching, showed the latitude and longitude grid, and took a screenshot, which they inserted into their Excel worksheet. The lesson took four class periods.