ACARA v9 CONTENT DESCRIPTION “represent observations in provided templates and identify patterns with guidance”
Builds on noticing things around us with our eyes and ears. Here we take what we notice and put it somewhere safe: a chart we can fill in. Once it is written down, we can look back and find what happens the most and what looks different.
We notice, then we write it down
When we watch the world, lots of things happen. It is hard to keep them all in our head. So we use a chart. A chart is a ready-made box where we put a mark for each thing we see. Each mark stands for one time it happened. At the end of the week, all our marks sit together and we can count them.
Make a bar chart from your marks
A class counted the weather every day for a week. Each kind of day got a mark. Look at the marks as a chart, then change to a bar chart.
In the bar chart the tallest bar is Sunny, with five days. The tallest bar shows the weather we had the most. The smallest bar, Windy, is the one we had the least.
Read the pattern: what happens the most?
Once our marks are in a chart we can look for a pattern. A pattern is the story the chart tells us. The most common thing has the tallest bar or the most marks. The rarest thing has the shortest bar. With a grown-up to help, we point to the tallest bar and say what it means. That is reading the pattern.
Favourite fruit: which one wins?
Children in a class each chose one favourite fruit. The chart shows how many chose each one. Find the tallest bar.
Apple has the tallest bar with six children, so apple is the favourite. Pear has the shortest bar, so the fewest children chose pear. The chart lets us see the winner in one look.
Spotting the odd one out
Sometimes one mark does not fit the rest. Maybe all our numbers go up and up, and then one number drops down low. That odd one is worth a second look. It might be a miscount, or it might be something special that happened that day. With help, we find it and ask why.
Find the count that does not fit
A class counted birds at the window each day. The counts grow bigger and bigger, but one day breaks the pattern. Click the point that does not fit.
Click the point that does not fit the pattern of the others.
Saying what the chart shows
When we read a chart out loud, we want to say the true thing it shows. Some sentences match the chart and some do not. Looking back at our weather chart, we can sort the sentences into the ones that are right and the ones that are wrong. This helps us learn to tell a true reading from a guess.
True or not true about the weather chart
Our weather chart had Sunny 5, Cloudy 3, Rainy 2, Windy 1. Decide if each sentence is a true reading of that chart.
Claim: The weather chart shows Sunny had the most days and Windy had the fewest.
Sunny had the tallest bar, with five days.
Windy had the shortest bar, with only one day.
There were more rainy days than sunny days.
Cloudy had three days, which is more than rainy.
Every day in the week was windy.
Decide whether each statement is evidence for the claim, or not.
Why this matters
Writing down what we notice is the very start of being a scientist. A chart keeps our observations safe so we can look back, count, and find the pattern. Reading the tallest bar and spotting the odd one out are the first steps. Big scientists use charts the same way to find out how the world works.
Quick self-check
1. You watched the weather for a week. What is the best way to keep what you saw?
2. In a tally chart of weather, the day with the most marks tells you the weather that was...
3. Friends picked a favourite fruit. Apple got 6, banana got 2, grape got 3. Which bar is tallest?
4. You count birds each day: 3, 4, 5, 1, 7. Which day does not fit the climbing pattern?