Mathematics - primary
five
Reading
pictographs and bar graphs
Reading pictographs
and bar graphs is a sub-topic of Graphs (Chapter ten) taken from Mathematics
syllabus for Primary five students in Negara Brunei Darussalam. This lesson
initiates the development of skills in reading and understanding data in the
forms of simple pictographs and bar graphs. A pictograph uses an icon to
represent a quantity of data values in order to decrease the size of the graph.
A key must be used to explain the icon. There are several advantages of
teaching and learning pictographs i.e. pupils will find pictographs can be read
easily and the visual are extremely appealing than other types of graphs. It can also be used to handle large data sets
easily using keyed icons. There are a number of difficulties in teaching and
learning this sub-topic such as pupils may find it tricky to quantify partial
icons and become confused with too many pictures used in the graph. It is
important that teachers to be aware that the icons used in the pictographs must
be of consistent size. A number of pictographs for oral exercises have to be
built for better understanding of this sub-topic.
Whereas teaching
bar graph, it displays discrete data in separate columns. Categories are
considered unordered and can be rearranged alphabetically, by size, etc. The
advantages of teaching bar graphs are the collected data sets can easily be
compared and it can also be used to show big or fractional numbers. Disadvantages of bar graphs are not
attractive compared to pictographs and pupils may find it difficult to read and
understand. This lesson is designed to teach pupils
that information can be organized in many different ways to make it easy for us
to read and understand. Whereas graphs are used extensively in our everyday
lives, many pupils are unaware of the multiple uses of graphs.
Teaching material – slideshow (download 125kb)
Class exercise (download 652kb)
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Last
updated: 23rd October 2005