Create a Climagraph that shows the precipitation and temperature patterns of a city in BC.

Objectives:

1. The students will be able to examine more closely the climate patterns for one city in the province by looking at both precipitation and temperature patterns. These two pieces of information help tell us a great deal about an area’s climate.
2. Students will be able to use their graphing techniques to present their data. Both a bar graph and line graph will be used simultaneously.
3. Students will be able to access the Environment Canada Website to find their data.

Materials Needed:

• Computers connected to the internet
• Ruler, graph paper, pencil crayons, fine tipped black felt

Activity:

Discuss with class the purpose of a climagraph and show some examples. (A student atlas is a good resource.) Be sure to discuss layout and organization. This can be harder than it looks and you may want to do this as a class and do one graph at a time.

Have students connect to the internet and go to www.kidfish.bc.ca, then click on the “Our Environment” icon, then click on “climate”. Have them read this section to familiarize with the different types of climates that occur in the province. Next have them choose a city for them to study. You may insist that each student choose a different place. Then a display can be made of a variety of B.C. cities from different zones.

Have students access climate data for a city in B.C. by doing the following:

• log on to http://www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/climate/climate_normals/index_e.cfm
• Click on “British Columbia”
• Click on the city of their choice (the city of their choice may be on a separate page. Click on next that is located above the Cities window. Keep doing this until you get a page that has the city of their choice on it. Then click on that city to access more information

For their city, they need to find the average monthly precipitation and the annual temperature. It may be handy for the students to print out the information

Once students have their data, begin graphs.

Note: Due to the complexity of this type of graph, for the younger grades you may wish to focus on just one type of graph for the annual precipitation or a line graph for the annual temperature of a city.