After looking at the Pacific Ring of Fire that runs along the coast last week, we explored temperature and rainfall patterns in different areas of Alaska.  Students had an opportunity to apply their graphing skills from math as they created bar graphs of temperature and rainfall data of different cities. Along the way, they learned the locations of Ketchikan, Juneau, Anchorage, Cold Bay, Utqiagvik, Nome, and Fairbanks as they posted their data.   After we organized and displayed our data alongside our map, we were able to make observations and see patterns.

An important skill that isn’t traditionally taught explicitly is how to ask good questions.  “Thinking keys” are different lenses we can use to form different types of questions. Students were challenged to create questions that would fall in each of these categories

Asking good questions as a learner opens the door to seeing data through different perspectives and fosters curiosity.  ​