Throughout the lesson, check students' progress in accessing the online database, importing data into an Excel spreadsheet, and graphing precipitation data. Other formal assessment techniques may include the following:

• Write a paragraph to justify whether the El Niņo event of 1997-1998 affected the geographic area studied in this activity.
  
  
• Provide students with a copy of a graphs showing temperature and precipitation data from the El Niņo event of 1986-87. Ask students to draw conclusions from the data and write a paragraph to explain their findings, using the data in the graphs to support their ideas.