Do you love teaching Data Handling? I just ADORE it!!! It is one of my absolute favourite maths topics to explore. It is so much fun and serious cute too!
I always block my data handling and tie it into fun, seasonal themes. I did a graph a week for the month of October on a Halloween Theme. We created Halloween themed graphs about spiders, ghosts and bats.
It’s so much easier to get children buzzed up about data handling when you explore it thematically 
I also feel that children understand more fully the use of graphs and graphing when it is linked to something meaningful in their own lives. Because I am mildly OCD on linking lessons I also try to tie my Data Handling into the story that we were reading for the week e.g. Aaaaargh Spiders and a graph about spiders.
Here are the Representing and Interpreting Data Curriculum Objectives for Junior Infants, Senior Infants and First Class:
- represent and interpret data in two rows or columns using real objects, models and pictures
Below is my ghost themed pictogram freebie :
Click here to download
Click here to download
I simply cut out the title and stuck it to a sheet of poster paper. Pupils stick their ghost under the column that applies to them. My class seem to be particularly brave. Not one of them said that ghosts were creepy!! Mind you, I think that the ghosts above are particularly cute. They are from the Enlightened Elephant.
Data Handling naturally lends itself to making comparisons and naturally creates language rich Maths Talks. We stopped periodically to predict which column would win and why, what the difference was between columns, what difference one more vote would make to each side… Lots and lots of math talk was generated. I also love it when children spontaneously use maths language in their response. “I predict that creepy will win because it has more” or “I predict that cute can’t win now because only 2 children are left to vote and that’s not enough to win”. Talk like that just blows me away!!! Oh yeah, the use of the word “predict” ties in with the Reading Comprehension Strategies we are exploring.
I hope that you like my Ghost Themed Pictogram Freebie and manage to squeeze it in next week. It would make for a great maths lesson on the day of the holidays 
Have fun,
Miss Mernagh
Have fun,
Miss Mernagh
