Statistics in Year 2
Making lists and organising data into different categories continues in Year 2. One key aspect is to use numbers as the source of data and organise numbers according to their properties. For example, numbers can be sorted into even and odd. Children should also be able to generate their own lists of cars, sweets, girls’ names etc. as well as helping parents with shopping lists, rotas, names for a birthday party etc. Be imaginative and use every opportunity to make lists!
Tally charts are a great way to record data, but to make the most of them children will need to be able to count in 5s.
Tally charts can be used to produce pictograms. At first pictograms can be made using concrete apparatus such as counters or cubes before moving on to drawing their own pictures. Later, children can draw pictograms where the symbols represent more than one item. Usually the symbols represent 2, 5 or 10 items (e.g. one stick person represents 10 people). In this case help is often needed in pointing out that the picture means ten people, not just one, and that half a stick person represents 5 people.
By the end of Year 2 children should have a good understanding of these words:
vote, survey, questionnaire, data, count, tally, sort, set, represent, table, list, graph, chart, diagram, axes, label, title, most common or popular.
Statistics provide a rich source of interesting maths. Why not take a look at our resources now.
And don’t forget our Year 2 on-screen activities for tally charts and reading graphs.