Here is a finished tally of how our class travels to school. A tally is a way of counting where you make one mark for each thing, and every fifth mark crosses the four before it to make a gate of five. Look hard at the rows of marks below. Which way has the most marks beside it?

How our class travels to school

Each snapshot shows a tally row with its frequency number in the column beside it. The trick is to count the gates in fives first, then add the loose marks at the end. Watch how the empty row is handled too: one way has no marks at all, so its frequency is 0, which means nobody chose it.

Today we work through a real tally together: how our class travels to school. For each row we count the gates in fives, add the loose marks, and fill in the matching frequency number.

Once every row has its number, we do two more things on the board. First we add all the frequencies to find the total counted altogether. Then we find how many more pupils walked than took the bus.

Today we turn tallies into frequencies and answer one question each. The questions get a step harder each time: first read a single row, then read a tricky row with gates plus loose marks, then find the total of every category, then find how many more chose the most chosen game than the least chosen one.