Pictographs

In my previous post of pie charts and dot plots, I mentioned a lesson that was done in class. I will give a few details as to what we did in that lesson. The instructor handed everyone a small bag of M&M's and we each counted how many brown, green, orange, red, blue and yellow pieces of candy were in a bag. As a class we added up all our amounts and we put the data into a pictograph, dot plot, bar graph, and pie chart.

We, the students had to create a pictograph based on our own data from our own individual M&M bags. That was the first step in the lesson, and we discussed whether pictographs were indeed accurate and easy to read as compared to another graph; such as a bar graph or a pie chart. After doing a little research, I learned that students should be learning about graphs in Kindergarten, and as they move on to 1st grade they should be familiar with graphs and be able to read them.