English Construct a graph to show trends in a character's emotions related to a particular event: Cuthbert’s Babies.
Mathematics Complete a table to show the amount of staff members' Christmas bonus, then use this to calculate how much money is left over: $200 bonus.
Mathematics Complete and use a table to graph the cost per hour of repairing a car: Car maintenance.
Science Complete a table about properties of paper towels: The best mopper upper.
Science Interpret a graph of a car's journey and add to the graph to represent a further description of the journey: A car journey.
Investigating tables and graphs potentially strengthens several key competencies.
Using language, symbols, and texts: Knowing about graphs and tables strengthens students' ability to access and critique others' ideas. It also helps them to effectively communicate their own. The statement that students' "confidently use ICT" (p. 12) reinforces the role assistive technology has for tables and graphs. This should include organising, analysing, and making sense of information as well as being able to "access and provide information and to communicate with others" (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 12).
Participating and contributing: Interpreting and critiquing sometimes conflicting data is a necessary skill for making decisions. Tables and graphs are a useful tool for organising available data for decision making. They are also a useful way of providing evidence to convince others towards a particular argument.
Thinking: Analysing and synthesising data from various sources is an important part of developing arguments and decision making.
What are the problem areas for students? The National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) identified two relevant sets of skills
extracting and interpreting information
constructing or completing graphs and tables.
Some technical vocabulary can cause problems for some students.
A table is sometimes called a chart. This is a correct use, but can confuse students.
Some students are only familiar with the everyday meaning of table. These students draw a kitchen table when asked to "draw a table". Go to Language barriers.
In mathematics and science the term range is often used to refer to a single number whereas in everyday situations we tend to use the word "range" to refer to the set of numbers between a lower and upper limit. For example in the question "What is the range of temperature fluctuations shown in this place?" the correct answer would be 14 °C if range is interpreted in a mathematical sense and 35°C to 49°C if range is interpreted in an every day context. Mathematics also refers to the y-axis of a graph as the range (the x-axis is called the domain).
Tables In our ARB trials we have found that most students can complete simple table-reading tasks. Students have had difficulty with:
constructing more complex tables, e.g. two-way tables
