Classroom Activities: Tally Charts and Bar Graphs
These classroom activities are designed to complement the Tally Charts and Bar Graphs topic on BrainPOP Jr.
Class Census
If possible, visit the U.S. Census website at www.census.gov with the whole class and explore different data from the entire population. You can explore data from your community or state and discuss how the information was collected from people. Then draft your own survey together. Think of different questions your students want to explore, such as how classmates get to school, what items they recycle, what they want to be when they grow up, etc. Decide how large you want your census to be: your students can survey the whole school, fellow students in their grade levels, or just members of the classroom. After students collect the information, discuss the results of the survey together.
Bar Graphs Galore
In order to practice making bar graphs, think of a question for your students to answer. What kinds of pets do they have? What is their favorite fruit? What is their favorite sport? Where would they like to go on a class trip? What is their favorite season? Survey their answers and create a tally chart and a bar graph together. Remind students to title their graphs and label each side of the graph. Can students look at the bar graphs and deduce how many people total were surveyed? Create different bar graphs together and have student volunteers draw conclusions using the graphs.
Graph Collage
Remind children that charts and graphs are all around us. Have your students look at newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and websites to find different examples of charts and bar graphs. Have them cut out the graphs they find and paste them to a display poster board. What do the charts and graphs show? How do graphs help people understand data? Allow students to share their findings and draw comparisons. This will expose children to a variety of different graphs and help them understand the different ways to communicate large amounts of information in a simple and clear way.
