Idea 1of 22
A graph needs a title and labels
What can a graph tell you if it has no words?
Today you'll discover
- what bars alone can tell you
- what the title does
- what the axis labels do
Think firstFour bars, and not one word
What does the tallest bar tell you?
Decide first, then press Next. Read the words on a graph before the bars.
A bar graph of four bars with a scale up the side but no words at all. Then a title appears at the top, Favourite recess activity, Room 12, then the names under the bars and the axis labels Activity and Number of students, then the values 12, 8, 5 and 3. The last step shows four bars about cans, again with no words.
See the whole ideathe big idea and the key word, in one place
The big idea
A title says what a graph is about; axis labels say what each axis counts.
Easy to get wrongWrite labels in words, with units: “Number of students”, not just “#”. A reader should never have to guess.
Names under the barsThe names under the bars (Soccer, Tag, Skipping, Reading) are labels too. Without them, nobody knows which bar is which.
Key words
- title
- the line at the top of a graph that says what the data is about
- axis label
- the words along an axis that say what it shows, like “Number of students”
Ready to use it?
- Add a title and axis labels to a graph.
- Say what a graph counts from its words.