-by Mimi Rothschild

Graphs can make information immediately understandable – but only if you can read them. Reading graphs is an important skill our students need, and making graphs is a great way to get that understanding completely solid. Having students make graphs is also a great way to check and see whether your students have fully understood the information they’ve learned.

What kinds of graphs are most useful?
• Bar graphs show information as bars of varying heights. They can give a very clear picture of how one thing compares with another. The populations of different countries, the heights of plants grown under different conditions, and the prices of different but comparable items are good examples of things that can be shown with bar graphs.

Bar Graph

• Line graphs are best for showing how things change over time. Points are connected with a line which goes up or down across dates, giving a quick impression of increase or decrease. Line graphs are good for showing things like growth of a population over time, changes in the numbers of people playing a particular sport, or rising and falling prices.

Line Graph

• Pie charts or circle graphs show how one thing is divided up. A pie chart lets you see what proportion of deaths in a war were from battle wounds, or what percentage of time in a school day is spent on the computer.

Pie Chart

• Venn diagrams are circles representing different groups of things. One circle is laid over another to show what the two groups have in common and where they differ. A Venn diagram can show, for example, that both Canadians and people in the United States are North Americans, but that Canadians have two national languages and the U.S. has one.

Venn Diagram

Here are some ways to practice making and using graphs:
• Take one set of facts and show it with several different kinds of graphs. Decide which graph does the best job of showing that information. Do this each time you learn new information for a week or two, and see whether your students can make generalizations about what kinds of graphs are best for which purposes.
• Have students find graphs in books, magazines, or online references, and write paragraphs explaining exactly what each graph shows.
• Graph data over a period of time. Weather, growth of the kids in the family, number of books read, or number of miles walked are examples of data sets that work well for graphing. Notice how much easier it is to see the patterns in the information with graphs than with daily notes.
• Try making graphs that compare different sets of information. For example, you could make a graph showing the football scores for a favorite team this season and last season, and then add three more teams for comparison. See whether at some point, as you add information sets, it makes sense to change to another kind of graph.
• Make an art project of a graph. Use icons, collage, or other creative additions to make your graphs visually interesting.

**********************************************************
Mimi Rothschild is the Founder of LearningByGrace.org the nation’s leading provider of online PreK-12 online Christian educational programs for homeschoolers.