Graph creation and interpretation: Putting skills and context together

Although the creation of graphs to display data has been part of the school curriculum for some time, the call in the new Australian Curriculum for “numeracy across the curriculum” provides both the opportunity and challenge to link the skills of graph creating with the understanding of context in order to produce meaningful interpretation of the messages held in graphs. This paper reports on classroom experiences of and assessment interviews with 12 grade 5/6 students who were introduced to the software TinkerPlots to assist in graph creation. The focus is on their success at graph creation and interpretation in contexts that provide potential links to other subjects in the school curriculum. Implications for both teaching and learning are drawn from the students’ experiences.