Primary ICT - Numeracy - Handling Data

This programme observes a Year 4 class at a Bristol primary school where teacher Simon Mills uses the problem of the distribution of colours in a jar of sweets to explore the challenge of understanding frequency and interpreting and presenting data.

The class works in the school's ICT suite over three lessons to initially build a frequency table in Excel, then moved on to constructing a bar chart from these tables. In the final session, the pupils labelled and titled their charts and discussed the best ways to represent their results.

Key points:

• The challenge in teaching maths is in the language
• ICT allows students to see results quickly - they can access the maths and not worry about presentation
• Good literacy on the technical aspects of the suite is crucial for lesson success