Max Maths, Year 4, Learn together, Reading and making bar graphs (1)

In a Year 4 mathematics lesson, pupils learn about the practical application of bar graphs through a relatable classroom activity. Tya, a character in the exercise, surveys her classmates to find out which types of fruit they have brought for their lunch. She collects data on four different fruits: apples, oranges, bananas, and star fruit, with the number of learners bringing each fruit being 8, 4, 10, and 2 respectively. This simple data collection is an ideal starting point for young learners to understand how everyday information can be quantified and represented visually.

Using the data gathered, Tya creates a bar graph to visually display the findings of her survey. The bar graph is labelled with the types of fruit along the horizontal axis, and the number of learners along the vertical axis, with each bar representing the quantity of a particular fruit brought by the learners. The graph shows apples and bananas as the most popular fruits, with 8 and 10 learners bringing them, while oranges and star fruit are less common, brought by 4 and 2 learners respectively. This hands-on approach to creating and reading bar graphs helps Year 4 students to interpret data and understand its representation in a bar graph format, laying the foundation for more advanced data handling skills.