Statistics in Year 6
In Year 6 pupils should be taught to:
6S1 interpret and construct pie charts and line graphs and use these to solve problems
6S3 calculate and interpret the mean as an average
In Year 6 children will be expected to interpret and construct line graphs and to calculate and interpret the mean as an average.
The important thing to remember about a line graph is that the intermediate values have meaning, in other words, each part of the line will have a value. Not all data is suitable to be presented as a line graph, for example, children’s choices of favourite colours would be great as a block graph, but not as a line graph. Conversions such as miles to kilometres give perfect data for a line graph.
A pie chart is a special kind of graph in which a circle is divided into sectors, or slices, that represent a proportion of the whole. It is a really good way to show relative sizes at a glance, but creating pie charts can be much trickier.
We start with a simple introduction to pie charts, using halves, quarters and sixths, before going on to explain how to create a pie chart from given data.