Lesson Notes By Weeks and Term v5 - Grade 3

Lesson Video

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Performance objectives

• Collect and organise data using tally marks.
• Draw a pictograph with a key.
• Draw a simple bar graph.
• Read and interpret data from tables and graphs.

Lesson summary

This week, we will become data detectives! Data handling is a very important skill that helps us understand the world around us. Think about your local spaza shop. The owner needs to know which cool drinks are the most popular so they can order more. They are using data! Or think about our favourite sports in South Africa – soccer, rugby, and cricket. How do we know which one most people like? We collect information, or data. In this lesson, we will learn the full process of data handling: how to ask questions, collect information, organise it neatly, and show it in a way that is easy to understand, like using pictures or bars.

Lesson notes

Data handling is a four-step process. Let's explore each step.

Step 1: Collecting Data This is the starting point. We ask a question and gather the answers (information). A simple way to do this is with a survey.

Let's ask our classmates a question: "What is your favourite South African fruit?" The possible answers could be: Apple, Banana, Grape, Orange, Pear. Imagine we ask 15 friends and get these answers: Apple, Grape, Banana, Apple, Orange, Pear, Grape, Apple, Banana, Grape, Apple, Orange, Grape, Apple, Banana This list is messy! We need a better way to count the answers as we get them. We use tally marks. A tally mark is a simple line (|) for each answer. When we get to the fifth answer for a category, we draw a line across the first four to make a bundle of 5 (||||). This makes counting much faster.

Step 2: Organising Data Now we organise the collected information into a tally table (or frequency table).