Reading a bar chart

Ages 6 to 8 Read together, then try alone · about 20 minutes

Read together

A bar chart shows how many of each kind. The taller the bar, the more there are.

Read the title, then the labels, then the bars.

Do it

1. Ask 10 people in your family or friends: What is your favourite fruit? Make a tally.
2. Draw a bar for each fruit on squared paper. Give the chart a title and labels.
3. Ask questions: Which fruit has most votes? How many more than the least?
4. Write one sentence about what you learned.

Talk about it

• Which bar is tallest?
• What does the chart tell us?

For the grown-up

Graphs turn counting into a picture. Ask only family and friends, and do not share the answers outside your home.

Mark as done

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Where this comes from

• National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers, Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (2010), Grade 3 measurement and data 3.MD.B.3
• Tufte, E. R., The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Graphics Press, 1983)

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources listed. Please read it before sharing it with a child.