Mathematics primary five

Mathematics - primary five

Reading pictographs and bar graphs

Reading pictographs and bar graphs is a sub-topic of Graphs (Chapter ten) taken from Mathematics syllabus for Primary five students in Negara Brunei Darussalam. This lesson initiates the development of skills in reading and understanding data in the forms of simple pictographs and bar graphs. A pictograph uses an icon to represent a quantity of data values in order to decrease the size of the graph. A key must be used to explain the icon. There are several advantages of teaching and learning pictographs i.e. pupils will find pictographs can be read easily and the visual are extremely appealing than other types of graphs. It can also be used to handle large data sets easily using keyed icons. There are a number of difficulties in teaching and learning this sub-topic such as pupils may find it tricky to quantify partial icons and become confused with too many pictures used in the graph. It is important that teachers to be aware that the icons used in the pictographs must be of consistent size. A number of pictographs for oral exercises have to be built for better understanding of this sub-topic.

Whereas teaching bar graph, it displays discrete data in separate columns. Categories are considered unordered and can be rearranged alphabetically, by size, etc. The advantages of teaching bar graphs are the collected data sets can easily be compared and it can also be used to show big or fractional numbers. Disadvantages of bar graphs are not attractive compared to pictographs and pupils may find it difficult to read and understand. This lesson is designed to teach pupils that information can be organized in many different ways to make it easy for us to read and understand. Whereas graphs are used extensively in our everyday lives, many pupils are unaware of the multiple uses of graphs.

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