Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

Tune In: What can the data tell us?
Find Out: What information can you transform into a pictorial representation?
Take Action: Creating your own graphs, charts and diagrams!

Tune In: What can the data tell us?

Step 1

Open this lesson by explaining that there is a lot of information students would have found through the research that they can transform into pictorial representations (information represented as a type of image or picture).

Step 2

Project the texts below one at a time with students or provide students with the Student Worksheet. Explain what the data representation is about and then ask students to interpret the information shared in each graph.

An infographic that shows how much meat Australian consumers eat.

Fig. 1. The bar chart above provides information on how much meat ‘average’ Australians ate in 2020 - 21.

Questions:

Which meat is least popular to Australian appetites?
How much kilograms of chicken does the average Australian eat per year?
Would you use this graph to support an argument to restrict commercial fishing or to expand it? Why?

An illustration that shows the life cycle of a Pacific salmon

Figure 2. This diagram shows the life cycle of a Pacific salmon.

Questions:

Where do Pacific salmon begin their lives?
Pacific salmon reproduce in the ocean. True or false.
If Pacific salmon are caught by commercial fishers in the ocean, what does this mean for the species?

A pie chart that speaks to how much seafood Australia imports

Figure 3. This pie chart shows how much seafood Australia imported from other countries in 2019 - 2020.

Questions:

On this graph, what do the different colours indicate?
What does ‘Other’ mean on this chart?
What information is missing on this chart?

Find Out: What information can you transform into a pictorial representation?

Step 1

Explain that sometimes one piece of information can be presented in a variety of different ways.

Step 2

Watch clip from the film

Blueback - Abby and Dora travel out to Macka's boat (vimeo.com/794748349)

In this clip, Macka says that the abalone is a ‘full day’s work’ and that they come from three different leases. If we could count each individual abalone we see on his boat - how might we represent the abalone Macka is fishing using a table, graph or diagram?

Step 3

Take students to Our World In Data (ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution). The bar graph will be the first option - there are tabs to other data visualisations underneath the graph - ‘map’ and ‘table’ should be explored.

Ask students which data visualisation they like best. Explain to students that when creating data visualisations, it is important to consider ease of understanding.

Step 4

Continue to navigate Our World In Data. You may select some ocean conservation topics to explore, or you might ask the class if there are topics they’d like to look up.

Take Action: Creating your own graphs, charts and diagrams!

Step 1

Have students refer to the list of animals on the Student Worksheet. Students should open Excel or Google Sheets and open a new file. They should create a table with two columns and as many rows there are animals listed, and input the data.

In doing so, they are creating another data visualisation of the information in the table.

Their table at a minimum, should look like this.

Step 2

Show

Once students have completed the table, demonstrate how to convert this information into a pie or donut graph using either Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel as follows:

Students highlight the table.
They go to ‘Insert’ tab and scroll down and click ‘
Chart’On the right hand side, ‘Set Up’ and ‘Customise’ will be options - students should click Set Up. Under ‘Chart Type’ they can select which chart they’d like to use - pie or donut chart is recommended for this data set.
Under ‘Customise’, students can play with the look of their chart.

Their final results should look something like this.

Step 3

Ask students to evaluate the different graphs and charts made. Which is the easiest to understand? Which one has the most specific information? Are the graphs and charts useful in different ways? How so? Students may like to write a caption for their data sets to explain what information is presented.

Differentiated Learning

We trust that teachers are the best equipped to know how to cater to the diversity in their classes. At Cool Australia, we incorporate a variety of differentiation strategies into each lesson. Firstly, each lesson in this unit appeals to an array of different learning preferences. Learning activities can be completed in a number of different ways - if a student feels more comfortable speaking rather than writing, there are opportunities to accommodate this. In lessons that feature group work or learning stations, we trust that teachers will use their discretion in knowing how to best organise their students in accordance to positive working relationships and ability. Graphic organisers and scaffolds are often included so students can ‘visually think’ and keep a record of their work. While our lessons are designed to be 55 - 60 minutes in length, we trust that teachers will manipulate lesson and segment times according to the needs of their students.

Blueback - Presenting Data

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