Stage 1 - data – tally marks

Activities to support the strategy

Teacher conducts survey (choose topic to suit class interests)
Explain tally marks (one for each vote; look at what happens at every 5th vote)
Look at the amount of categories students could choose from, discuss what would happen if too many or too few categories were available
Explain every student must vote, but only once
At the end of the survey, count the tally marks (as a class) and make sure it represents the amount of students in the class
Discuss as a class what they notice about the survey E.g. which is the most popular, least popular, how many votes in a given category etc.

Get students to select their own topic to survey (give some ideas)
Give instructions on how to lay out their tally table (give between 3 and 5 possible categories, remind why too many or too few categories are ineffective)
Allow time for students to survey other members of the class (each student must vote, but only once)

Students to count tally marks and make sure they match the amount of students in the class
Students to look at the results of the survey and pose questions that can be answered by looking at their tally table
Working in pairs, student 1 is to cover their survey categories and quiz student 2 with the questions they have already developed about their tally table
Students to swap roles

Class discussion looking at what questions were easy to answer, which were difficult to answer, which couldn't be answered by looking at the graph
Students to reflect on other uses of a tally table
Students to reflect on other questions that could have been posed

ACMSP069: Collect data, organise into categories and create displays using lists, tables, picture graphs and simple column graphs

MA1-17SP Gathers and organises data, displays data in lists, tables and picture graphs, and interprets the results

HSIE