Temperature Trends
About This Worksheet
This worksheet helps sixth-grade students compare and order integers through a familiar temperature setting. Students use a table of winter temperatures from several locations and answer questions about which values are warmer, colder, greater, less, or closest to zero. Because the temperatures include negative numbers, zero, and positive numbers, students get meaningful practice reading signed values. The real-world setting makes integer comparison easier to understand because students can connect the numbers to weather they may already know.
What Students Practice
Students read temperatures from a table and compare values that fall above and below zero. They identify the warmest and coldest locations, compare pairs of temperatures, and determine which value is greater or less. Students also decide which temperature is closest to zero and arrange all of the temperatures from coldest to warmest. This combines integer comparison, ordering, and absolute-distance thinking in one clear activity.
Why This Matters
Temperature is one of the easiest real-world ways for students to understand why negative numbers are useful. Students can see that a temperature farther below zero is colder even when its numeral appears larger. Comparing these values also strengthens the idea that numbers increase as you move to the right on a number line. These skills prepare students for later work with rational numbers, inequalities, coordinate planes, and signed quantities.
Teaching Tips
Encourage students to picture a thermometer or number line as they compare each pair of temperatures. Remind them that a value closer to zero is warmer when both temperatures are negative. For the final ordering problem, have students locate the coldest value first and then work upward toward the warmest. Asking students to explain one or two comparisons aloud can help you quickly check whether they understand negative-number order.
Curriculum Standards
This worksheet supports CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.NS.C.7, which asks sixth-grade students to understand the ordering of rational numbers. It also connects directly with CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.NS.C.7.A because students interpret comparisons based on relative positions on a number line. The real-world temperature context also reinforces CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.NS.C.5, which introduces positive and negative numbers as quantities with opposite directions or values.