Temperature Stats
Charting the temperature for a city or several cities is a project
that works well with third through fifth grade depending on the complexity. Clippings from
newspapers or stats from an Internet site serve as great resources. Actual recordings from
a school weather station could be used by checking the temperature daily at the same time.
Set up the following Temperature Stats template for your students to retrieve and
use.
Example Template:
Using AutoFormat
- After typing in text, highlight the cells of your chart.
- Go to the Format menu and select AutoFormat.
- Select a table format from the choices given. Format colors of cells if desired.
- Click OK and go to the border button on the toolbar and select the outline option to put
a border around the entire chart if there isn't one.
Adding the Formula
- Click in cell B4 and type the formula for average:
=AVERAGE(B2:B3)
Click out of cell B4. Now click back into cell B4.
Move the plus sign to the tiny square that is on the bottom right corner of the cell.
Drag the plus sign to the cell F4 to copy the formula into these cells.
Excel automatically changes the cell references. A cell reference that changes is
called a relative reference.
Click in cells C4 and D4 to see the changes in the formula.
Save the template for students to input weather data. Data can be retrieved for
the Internet, Newspapers or local weather on television.
Instruct students on how to make a graph using the chart wizard. The line graph is
a great example to show the three types of data.
* Remember to always make a backup copy of a template!
April, 1999
Updated March 2001
Kathy Adkins
Forsyth County Schools