Interpreting & Predicting from Bar Graphs

Abstract

Bar graphs are commonly used throughout society as a simple tool for representing data. How do students in early childhood interpret bar graphs in a familiar context? Thirty Grade 3 students were interviewed to explore their interpretations of a bar graph of how children travel to school and their predictions for various changed circumstances. Student responses to the task reflected three levels of graph comprehension: reading the data, reading between the data, and reading beyond the data.