Important update from TheSchoolRun
For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.
What this means for subscribers:
- Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
- In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
- As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.
A few changes to be aware of:
- The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
- The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.
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What is a bar chart?
What is a bar chart?
A bar chart displays information (data) by using rectangular bars of different heights.
A bar chart has a vertical axis with numbers on it, and a horizontal axis showing values of something that has been investigated.
Using bar charts to record data in primary school
As part of teaching data handling, teachers will usually ask children to investigate something by asking the other children in their class about it. This could be a favourite fruit, cake, animal or country. Older children may be asked to investigate opinions about something, for example school dinners or school uniform. Children then record the information they find using a tally chart.
Pictograms are used in Key Stage 1 to introduce children to bar charts.
The next step is for children to colour in blocks on a ready-made axis to show information they've gathered:
In Key Stage 2 children will start to produce their own bar charts on squared paper.
- First they need to think about what is going to go on each axis.
- They then need to look at their numbers and make sure their vertical axis goes up as high as the biggest number.
- They need to work out whether the numbers on the vertical axis are going to go up in 2s, 5s or 10s and position the numbers correctly.
- They then need to work out how wide each bar needs to be. (It is very important that bars are drawn all the same width).
Children need to be able to interpret bar charts by answering various questions. Example questions might be:
How many more children liked bananas than oranges?
Which was the least popular fruit?
How many children were asked altogether?
They also need to be able to produce bar charts on a computer. Usually, teachers will dedicate a few ICT lessons to showing children how to produce bar charts relating to information gathered in a maths lesson.
Later on in Key Stage 2, children need to start producing bar charts with grouped discrete data.
This bar chart was drawn up after a class of Year 6 children recorded data on the heights of everyone in the class. Instead of having a bar for every single measurement, they instead grouped the measurements. Children in Year 6 would need to be able to understand this bar chart and also be able to gather and present data in a similar way.
Children may be asked questions similar to the following about a bar chart like this one:
Kathleen is 142cm tall. She said: 'I am in the most common height range in the class.' Is she correct?
Robert is 132cm tall. He said 'I am the shortest child in the class.' Is he correct?
