Math + Love = Valentine's Day

Bar Graph
Second Grade Math

What's more romantic than a bar graph on Valentine's Day? In this Valentine's Day lesson plan, students will use
information from a data set to create their own tally charts and bar graphs and then analyze these graphs to
answer questions.

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to identify the features of a bar graph and draw a bar graph to represent a data set.

Materials and preparation Key terms

Class set of the Graphing Valentines worksheet data

One copy of the Picnic Bar Graph worksheet for tally marks
projection tally chart
Projector bar graph
Chart paper graph title
Class set of graph paper horizontal axis
Class set of rulers or straight edges vertical axis
axes labels
Markers scale
bar height
The Ice Cream Bar Graph worksheet (optional)
The Winter Sports: Practice Reading a Bar
Graph worksheet (optional)
The Blank Bar Graph worksheet (optional)

Attachments

Valentine Graph (PDF)

Picnic Bar Graph (PDF)
Ice Cream Bar Graph (PDF)
Winter Sports: Practice Reading a Bar Graph (PDF)
Blank Bar Graph (PDF)

Introduction (5 minutes)

Share with students that people across the world will be celebrating Valentine's Day this month, and one
of the biggest Valentine's Day traditions is to give cards to people you care about.
Explain to students that today they will learn about Mr. Mason's second graders who celebrated
Valentine's Day in class by exchanging cards with one another.
Tell students that we have information about the types of Valentine's Day cards that Mr. Mason's
students exchanged, and we are going to use this information to create graphs and answer some
questions.

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling (10 minutes)

Project the Graphing Valentines worksheet onto the board, and distribute one copy to each student.
Refer students to the information in part 1, and explain that this is the information, or data, that we will
use during this lesson. Read this information aloud.
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 Draw students' attention to the tally chart. Review that a tally chart represents data using tally marks,
which are a quick way of keeping track of numbers in groups of five. Tell students that to make a tally
mark, draw one vertical line for the first four numbers and one diagonal line across the first four lines for
the fifth number.
Model for students how to fill in the first row (Heart Candies) using tally marks.
Call on a student volunteer to come to the board to fill in the second row (Lollipops) using tally marks.
Ask students to complete the remaining two rows independently and review answers as a class.

Guided Practice (10 minutes)

Tell students that they are going to use the information in the tally chart to create a bar graph.
Review that a bar graph is a simple graph where the heights of each bar provide information.
Project the Picnic Bar Graph worksheet onto the board.
Refer students to the different features of this bar graph including: the graph title, which tells us the
information we can find on the graph, the vertical axis, which goes from top to bottom, the horizontal
axis, which goes along the bottom of the graph, the axes labels, which tell us what information is
presented on each axis, the scale, which tells us how much or how many, and the bar height, which tell
us the value of each bar.
Write each of the features on a piece of chart paper titled: Bar Graph Features.

Independent working time (20 minutes)

Explain to students that they will make their own bar graph using the information from the Graphing
Valentines worksheet.
Prompt students to look at part 2 on the Graphing Valentines worksheet, and review the features of the
graph. Tell students that they can refer to the Bar Graph Features anchor chart to help them.
Tell students that when they have finished creating their bar graphs, they will answer the questions in
part 3 of the Graphing Valentines worksheet. Remind students to use their tally chart and/or bar graph to
help answer the questions.

Differentiation

Support:

Provide students with more examples of bar graphs during Guided Practice/Modeling (see optional
worksheets).

Enrichment:

During Independent Work Time, distribute the Blank Bar Graph worksheet to students who can create
their own bar graph from scratch.
In this Valentine's Day lesson plan, introduce students to a third type of graph (such as a picture graph),
and ask students to graph this information in a new visual representation.

Assessment (5 minutes)

Draw a bar graph on the board that is missing—or has mixed up—some of the bar graph features. For
example, the horizontal and vertical axes are switched or the title does not match the information
presented.
Go over the Bar Graph Features anchor chart and ask students to give you a thumbs up if your bar graph
has the information correct and a thumbs down if the information is incorrect.
Ask students to help correct the errors in the bar graph.

Review and closing (5 minutes)

Tell students to think about what was easier to use to answer the questions: the tally chart or bar graph?
Ask students to share their opinions and provide specific reasons why one chart was easier to look at and
analyze than the other.

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 Name Date

Graphing Valentines
Mr. Mason’s class exchanged valentines to celebrate Valentine’s Day!

Part 1. Use the information below to create

a tally chart that shows the different types of
valentines in the class.

Aditi, Ellie, and Yahia gave valentines with

heart candies. Types of Valentines

Sarah, Abigail, Denver, Jakayla, and Claire Heart Candies

gave valentines with lollipops.
Lollipops
Fiona and Thomas gave valentines with pencils.
Pencils
Penny, Felix, Hannah, Trent, Talia, Alec, and
Rehan gave valentines with stickers. Stickers

Part 2. Use the tally chart to complete Part 3. Answer the questions about the
the bar graph. valentines in Mr. Mason’s class.

Valentines in Mr. Mason’s Class 1. How many students gave out valentines
with stickers?

9
students
8 2. How many students gave out valentines with
heart candies?
7
Number of Students

students
6
3. Which type of valentine was given out the most?
5

4
4. Which type of valentine was given out the least?
3

2
5. How many more students gave valentines
1 with lollipops than heart candies?

0 more students
Heart Lollipops Pencils Stickers
Candies

Types of Valentines
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 Picnic Bar Graph
Read the bar graph to learn which picnic games were the most popular.
Then answer the questions below. Show your work when possible.

12
11
10
9
Number of People

8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

Frisbee Tag Races Horseshoes Tug-o-war

Types of Picnic Games

1. How many people love races?

2. How many more people chose tug-o-war than frisbee?

3. Add the number of people who love horseshoes and the number of people who love
races. What’s the difference between that total and the number of people who love tag?

4. How many more people would it take to make frisbee the most loved picnic activity?

5. List the activities in order from most favorite to least favorite.

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 Coming Up with Questions
Glenn wanted to know what his friends’ favorite flavors of ice cream are,
so he surveyed his friends and made a graph of his findings. Look at the bar
graph, and come up with three questions about the graph to ask a friend or
family member. Write them in the spaces below.

9
8
7
Number of Students

6
5
4
3
2
1

Chocolate Vanilla Cookies and Strawberry

Cream
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor

Example: Which flavor of ice cream is the most popular?

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 Name Date

Winter Sports:
Practice Readng a Bar Graph
The class took a survey about their favorite winter sport.
Read the bar graph to learn which winter sports were
the most popular. Then, answer the questions below.
Show your work.

10
9
8
Number of People

7
6
5
4
3
2
1

Ice Skating Skiing Sledding Snowboarding

Types of Winter Sports

1. How many people chose snowboarding?

2. How many more people chose ice skating than sledding?

3. What’s the difference between the number of people who chose ice skating and sledding
compared to those who chose skiing?

4. How many more people would it take to make ice skating the favorite winter sport?

5. List the sports in order from most favorite to least favorite.

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 Bar Graph

Name Date

10

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