Here is the tally we collected for how the class gets to school: Walk has 12, Cycle has 5, Bus has 8, Car has 3. A tally is great for counting, but it is hard to tell at a glance which way is the most popular. What is the same and what is different about these four counts? Which one would be the tallest if we drew it as a picture?

You will see three bar charts one after another: how we get to school, favourite fruit, and one more for reading a single bar off the scale. Watch how each bar's height matches its count, and how you read a bar by tracing its top across to the side scale. Be ready to name the shortest bar and the second-place fruit.

Today we build the bar chart for our travel-to-school tally together. The counts are Walk 12, Cycle 5, Bus 8, Car 3. We will drag each bar up until its height matches the count, then read it back to check it lines up with the right number on the side scale.

We have a few bar-chart jobs to work through at the board, each one a little trickier. First, match a chart to its tally. Next, build the favourite-fruit chart, where two of the fruits come out at the same count. Last, build a travel chart where two bars tie at the same height. We will check each answer together before moving on.

What we learned today

• A tally turns into a bar chart: each bar's height matches the count.
• The categories sit along the bottom; the counts run up the side scale.
• To read a bar, follow its top across to the side scale.

Coming up

Next we look at choosing a scale: what to do when one bar is huge and the others are tiny, so we can step the side scale in twos, fives or tens to make the chart easy to read.