Worked example · Science · Year 8
DCF: Data and computational thinking → Data and information literacy
A secure Year 8 response to the same dataset, annotated so you can see which success criterion each part meets. Every plotted point here matches Table 1 exactly, so you can hold a pupil's graph paper against this page and check it. Show it after pupils have drawn their own chart, or you will get thirty copies of it.
The charts below are drawn into the page itself, so they print from the browser with no picture files and no internet connection.
| Which column am I charting? | Temperature anomaly, in °C above the 1951–1980 average. |
|---|---|
| Line graph or bar chart, and why? | Line graph. The years are a time sequence, so joining the points shows the trend between them. |
| Horizontal axis | Year, 1990 to 2025. |
| Vertical axis | Temperature anomaly (°C above the 1951–1980 average). |
| Lowest and highest values | Lowest 0.42 °C (2000); highest 1.18 °C (2023). |
| One big square is worth… | 0.2 °C going up, 5 years going across. Scale runs 0.0 to 1.3 so 1.18 fits inside it. |
| Chart title | Global temperature anomaly, 1990–2023. |
| Source line | NASA GISS surface temperature analysis (GISTEMP). |
Meets criterion 1 and criterion 3: the chart type is justified, and the scale was chosen from the largest value before drawing started.
Meets criteria 2, 3 and 4. Both axes carry a label and a unit, the vertical scale is even in steps of 0.2 °C, and all eight values from Table 1 are plotted and labelled: 0.44, 0.46, 0.42, 0.68, 0.72, 0.90, 1.02, 1.18.
This is the finish-early task. A bar chart suits sea level here because the pupil wanted to compare the eight separate snapshots rather than stress the slope; the axis still starts at zero, so the bar heights are honest.
Between 1990 and 2023 the global temperature anomaly increased from 0.44 °C to 1.18 °C above the 1951–1980 average. That is a total change of +0.74 °C in 33 years, which works out at about 0.22 °C per decade (0.74 ÷ 33 × 10). Sea level and carbon dioxide rose over exactly the same period, by 109 mm and by 66.63 parts per million.
The year that does not fit the pattern is 2000, at 0.42 °C. It is lower than both 1995 (0.46 °C) and 1990 (0.44 °C), so for the first ten years of the table the line actually dips. Single years move up and down because of natural cycles in the Pacific Ocean, so you have to look at the whole 33 years to see the trend rather than picking two years that suit you.
This data came from NASA GISS, NOAA and the NASA Sea Level Change portal, which are national science agencies that publish their raw measurements and their methods, so I can trust it more than a figure quoted in a social media post with no source.
Meets criterion 5: it quotes real values, does the arithmetic, names 2000 as the anomalous year, and judges the source instead of just repeating it.
With global-climate-indicators.csv open in a spreadsheet, the same three numbers come out of these formulae:
=AVERAGE(B2:B9) → 0.7275, the mean anomaly across the eight readings
=MAX(B2:B9)-MIN(B2:B9) → 0.76, the spread from 0.42 to 1.18
=C9-C2 → 109, the total sea level rise in mm from 1990 to 2023
Same evidence, produced the quick way. The pupil still has to label the chart the spreadsheet generates — the default chart has no units and no source.