We could ask the class anything at all today.
Some questions are easy to count, and some are not.
If I ask "what do you like?", everyone says something different. We could never count that.
If I ask "which is your favourite fruit — apple, banana or orange?", every answer fits one of just three groups.
Which of those two questions would be easier to count?
Watch how we tidy up a messy question. "What do you like?" is too big — nobody could count all those answers. We can shape it into "which is your favourite fruit — apple, banana or orange?" Now there are only three answers, and every person fits one of them. Look at the pre-set tally below: the three answer headings are ready, and the counts are already gathered. Notice how each answer had exactly one heading to land under.
Now watch a second question take shape. "How do you travel?" becomes "how do you travel to school — walk, cycle, car or bus?" Four tidy answers, and the headings are set up before we count a single hand.
Now we pick one question for the whole class and get it ready to count. Our class question today is: which is your favourite fruit: apple, banana or orange? This is the question we will all write in our copies later, so remember it.
The three answer headings are ready on the tally chart. One of us comes to the board and taps a row once for each hand that goes up. Everyone else puts a hand up when their answer is called. Watch that every hand fits one heading. If a hand does not fit, our headings need fixing.
In your maths copy, write our class question: which is your favourite fruit — apple, banana or orange? Then write the three answers underneath, one under the other.
Now we ask a new question and collect the answers from the whole class.
Our question starts off messy: What do you do after school? Everyone would say something different, so we could not count the answers. We make it tidy first, and then we ask it. Follow the card, one step at a time.
What makes a question easy to answer with data? Think about the messy questions and the tidy ones we made from them. What did every tidy question have in common?
Next we learn a quicker way to keep count as the answers come in: tally marks, with a gate stroke on every fifth.
Every lesson in the course is ready to teach like this one. See what else comes with it, and how to order it.