Bar Charts: Drawing and Reading

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1 Getting Started
2 Watch and Notice
3 Try It Together
4 Draw the Chart in Your Copy
5 Class Challenge
6 What Did We Notice?
7 What's Next
Pupil practice

1 - Getting Started ~4 mins

Illustration for Getting Started Here is the tally we collected for how the class gets to school: Walk has 12, Cycle has 5, Bus has 8, Car has 3. A tally is great for counting, but it is hard to tell at a glance which way is the most popular. What is the same and what is different about these four counts? Which one would be the tallest if we drew it as a picture?

Teacher Notes

Display the four tally counts as the class settles. Take two or three hands-up answers to 'which would be tallest?' — you want pupils predicting Walk before any chart appears, so the bar chart confirms a prediction rather than arriving cold.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+5 XP

2 - Watch and Notice ~10 mins

Three bar charts on screen: how we get to school, favourite fruit, and car colours. Watch how each bar's height matches its count, and how you read a bar by tracing its top across to the side scale. Be ready to name the shortest bar and the second-place fruit.

Teacher Notes

Take one chart at a time and pause for turn-and-name on each.

How we get to school: bars show Walk 12, Cycle 5, Bus 8, Car 3. Trace each top down to the scale to link tally to bar. Walk tallest, so most popular. Take two hands for the shortest, Car at 3.

Favourite fruit: apple 9, banana 4, orange 6, pear 2. Point out bars sitting on the bottom axis with gaps, each top lining up with a side number. After turn-and-name, ask one or two for second place, orange.

Reading the fourth bar: all four car-colour bars already drawn, so this is reading off, not finding a hidden one. Trace the Green top across to the scale, reaches 4, so four green cars. Same method reads any bar.

👇 Mark your steps as done as you complete them.

+10 XP

3 - Try It Together ~12 mins

Today we build the bar chart for our travel-to-school tally together. The counts are Walk 12, Cycle 5, Bus 8, Car 3. We will drag each bar up until its height matches the count, then read it back to check it lines up with the right number on the side scale.

Build our travel-to-school chart

Teacher Notes

This round is for talking it through together — pupils take turns at the board and the class agrees or corrects out loud.

Call one pupil up per bar. Before they drag, ask the class 'how high should this one go?' so the whole room predicts. After each bar lands, read it back down to the scale to confirm. Watch for pupils who drag a bar to the wrong gridline — the side scale steps in twos here, so Walk at 12 is six gridlines up, not twelve.

+15 XP

4 - Draw the Chart in Your Copy ~3 mins

COPYBOOK MOMENT

Illustration for Draw the Chart in Your Copy In your maths copy, sketch the bar chart frame: a side scale going up in twos (0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12) and the four labels along the bottom — Walk, Cycle, Bus, Car. Now draw each bar to match the tally we collected: Walk 12, Cycle 5, Bus 8, Car 3. Label both axes.

Teacher Notes

Walk the room glancing for two things: bars drawn to the right height, and both axes labelled. This is whole-class copybook practice, not marking — no scores, just a quick nudge if a bar is well off.

+10 XP

5 - Class Challenge ~11 mins

We have a few bar-chart jobs to work through at the board, each one a little trickier. First, match a chart to its tally. Next, read the Pear bar off a fruit chart that already has three bars filled. Last, build a chart where two bars come out the same height. We will check each answer together before moving on.

Bar chart challenges

Teacher Notes

These are the practice questions — pupils take turns at the board, check each answer, and the class confirms before moving on. Keep the board work brisk rather than over-explaining.

For the read-the-fourth-bar task, point at the Pear bar already shown and trace its top across to the side scale: this is the same point-and-trace move from Watch and Notice, just on a new chart. For the tied-categories task, draw out that two bars of equal height is fine and common — it just means those two categories had the same count.

+15 XP

6 - What Did We Notice? ~3 mins

MATHS TALK

Why does the height of each bar tell the story so quickly? What would change if we made the bars wider instead of taller — would the chart still tell us who was most popular?

Teacher Notes

Listen for pupils naming height as the thing that carries the count — revoice: 'so taller means more, and we read the height off the side scale.' Head off the idea that a wider bar means more; width is just for spacing, it tells us nothing about the count.

+10 XP

7 - What's Next ~3 mins

What we learned today

A tally turns into a bar chart: each bar's height matches the count.
The categories sit along the bottom; the counts run up the side scale.
To read a bar, follow its top across to the side scale.

Coming up

Next we look at choosing a scale: what to do when one bar is huge and the others are tiny, so we can step the side scale in twos, fives or tens to make the chart easy to read.

Teacher Notes

Keep this brief. Tie the forward look to the read-the-fourth-bar and tied-bar tasks the class just did — choosing the right scale is the next thing that makes a chart readable.

+5 XP

Pupil practice

Module 7 · Data, Chance and the Co-ordinate Plane Data & Chance

Lesson 87 · Bar Charts: Drawing and Reading

Download Activity Book page (PDF)

End of lesson

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This lesson is copyright of Coding Ireland 2017 - 2025. Unauthorised use, copying or distribution is not allowed.

Teacher Class Feed

1 - Getting Started ~4 mins

2 - Watch and Notice ~10 mins

3 - Try It Together ~12 mins

Build our travel-to-school chart

4 - Draw the Chart in Your Copy ~3 mins

5 - Class Challenge ~11 mins

Bar chart challenges

6 - What Did We Notice? ~3 mins

7 - What's Next ~3 mins

What we learned today

Coming up

Unlock the full learning experience

XP