Tally Charts and Bar Graphs
Background Information & Activities

Remind your children that graphs are useful tools for organizing and showing information. People can collect data, or information, by taking surveys. Then they can create tally charts and bar graphs to help people visualize data, answer questions, and make predictions. Your children should be familiar with surveys and using, creating, and analyzing tally charts and bar graphs.

During a survey, people ask others questions to collect information, or data. The U.S. Census Bureau is a department that collects information about the entire population of the United States. The U.S. Census collects data about the kinds of homes people live in, how they get to work, where they go to school, where they work, etc. Census workers take surveys of people and record information, which is then used to create bar graphs, pie charts, and other charts that help visualize the large amounts of data. Businesses, organizations, and departments of the government use this information to make predictions about markets and to figure out how to reach certain sub-populations or groups.

Review with your children that tally charts help people count. Each tally mark in a tally chart represents one object. For example, to count three apples, you make three tally marks in the chart. Tally marks are grouped in sets of five, which facilitates counting. Instead of counting marks one-by-one, you can skip-count by fives and add on any remaining marks. Practice counting objects in your class or home by using tally marks. Then practice skip-counting by fives in order to get your children familiar with multiples of five.

Your children should know how to create a bar graph from a tally chart. A bar graph uses bars to represent and display data. The bottom of the graph (the x-axis) can list categories in a given data set and the side of the graph (the y-axis) can list numbers. Your children should be able to draw a bar up from a category to a specific number in order to represent the number of objects in that category. Remind your children to give graphs titles and label each axis. You can use the same data to make a bar graph with the numbers on the x-axis and the categories on the y-axis. Explain that though the graph looks different, the data is still the same. It is just another way to look at the information.

Bar graphs allow people to analyze data and compare information. Discuss where your children have seen or used bar graphs before. Display different bar graphs for your children and help them draw conclusions from the data.

Tally Charts and Bar Graphs Teacher Activities – Click Here!

Tally Charts and Bar Graphs Family Activities – Click Here!

Tally Charts and Bar Graphs Teacher Activities

Class Census

If possible, visit the U.S. Census website at www.census.gov with the whole class and explore different data from the entire population. You can explore data from your community or state and discuss how the information was collected from people. Then draft your own survey together. Think of different questions your students want to explore, such as how classmates get to school, what items they recycle, what they want to be when they grow up, etc. Your students can survey the whole school or fellow students in their grade levels. After students collect the information, discuss the results of the survey together.

Bar Graphs Galore

In order to practice making bar graphs, think of a question for your students to answer. What kinds of pets do they have? What is their favorite fruit? What is their favorite sport? Where would they like to go on a class trip? What is their favorite season? Survey their answers and create a tally chart and a bar graph together. Remind students to title their graphs and label each side of the graph. Create different bar graphs together and have student volunteers draw conclusions using the graphs.

Graph Collage

Remind your students that charts and graphs are all around us. Have your students look at newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and websites to find different examples of charts and bar graphs. Have them cut out the graphs they find and paste them to a display poster board. What do the charts and graphs show? How do graphs help people understand data? Allow students to share their findings and draw comparisons. This will expose your children to a variety of different graphs and help them understand the different ways to communicate large amounts of information in a simple and clear way.

Tally Charts and Bar Graphs Family Activities

Family Graph

Have your child take a survey of your family members or friends. Your child may want to know where family members would like to take a vacation or a trip, their favorite restaurants or cuisine, or whether or not they would like to have a family reunion. Help your child create a tally chart and a bar graph to display his or her findings. How can your child use the data that he or she collected? Brainstorm different ideas together and write them down.

Community Findings

Together with your child, visit the U.S. Census Bureau website and look for information about your community. How many people live in the community? How many children? Then look at the historical data for your community. Help your child draw conclusions about how the community has changed over time. Is the population getting bigger or smaller, or has it stayed roughly the same size? Explain to your child that surveys and graphs help people understand information and draw conclusions.