Using infographics
Science knowledge is often communicated through visual representations – graphs, diagrams and infographics. Each type of visual representation has literacy components that students may need support to understand.
Temperature anomalies
A temperature anomaly is the difference from a baseline temperature established over the 1961–1990 reference period. The baseline temperature for each location is provided and is marked by a grey line. Blue indicates temperatures that are colder than average, while red indicates temperatures that are warmer than average. The 1961–1990 reference period is highlighted by grey shading.
Download as a PDF.
Infographic by Ministry for the Environment, Stats NZ and data providers and released under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
The science capability ‘Interpret representations’ encourages students to think about how data is presented, what the representation tells us and how it gets the message across.
Infographics provide an effective format to show a variety of things in a single figure. The article Understanding infographics provides background information on how they are constructed and why they are useful communication tools.
In this activity, students observe and interpret infographics from the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ’s Our atmosphere and climate 2020 report. The activity includes probing questions to help students understand the ways in which infographics present information. It also includes a simple framework for creating an infographic.
By the end of this activity, students should be able to:
develop literacy skills for interpreting the information in an infographic
discuss the purpose of an infographic
discuss how an infographic gets the message across
use this information to design and create a simple infographic.
Download the Word file (see link below).
