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Literacy Teaching Toolkit
Interpreting Graphs This section:
Literacy Teaching
Toolkit
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Writing
Using sentence starters to analyse graphs
Using a framework to interpret graphs Speaking and listening
Graphs communicate important quantitative information in a visual format and are often Multimodal literacy
used to communicate health and medical information. Much of the HPE curriculum involves
Expert literacy videos
students being presented with information in graphical form. Using this form of representation,
students must: Literacy glossary
know how to interpret graphs Note-taking and summarising texts
to elicit key information
Communicating understanding in
extract the basic information Health and Physical Education
draw conclusions Supporting reading of texts
compare and contrast and
Developing understanding of Health
provide recommendations. and Physical Education
Individuals with higher levels of graphical literacy are better able to find information in graphs, Introducing new terminology and
vocabulary
and they spend more time looking at conventional features of graphs to generate more
accurate interpretations (Okan, Galesic & Garcia-Retamero, 2015).
Health and Physical Education literacy:
putting it together
Teachers should explicitly teach the meaning-making (semiotic) systems of graphical
representations before having students analyse graphs (see 'Explicitly teaching text structure' ABC Education Literacy Mini Lessons
and 'Reading and unpacking visual representations of data' ). This includes explaining:
Analysing texts through questioning
the importance of headings
Interpreting Graphs
labelling of axes
Expanding Ideas
scaling of axes (for example, linear or logarithmic)
use of colour English as an additional language or
dialect (EAL/D) learners
choice of graph type (for example, pie chart, line graph, bar graph, column graph).
Literacy in Mathematics
Two strategies to support students to interpret graphs are:
Literacy in English
using sentence starters Literacy teaching toolkit: levels 7-10
explained
using frameworks
Literacy in Science
Additional strategies to support students to read graphs can be found in 'Language for graphs
and statistical displays'. Literacy in Health and Physical
Education
Using sentence starters to analyse graphs Introduction to Literacy in Health and
Physical Education
Sentence starters are one way to scaffold students' interpretation of graphs. Sentence starters Using sentence frames to interpret art
provide a focal point for students to begin writing (or saying) an interpretation of the data they elements
are viewing in graphical form.
Literacy in Technologies
Sentence starters can range in their cognitive demand, moving from identifying information
Literacy in the Humanities
and patterns in the graph to generating comparisons, predictions, and hypotheses.
Sentence starters teachers can provide students include:
This graph shows …
A pattern I notice in the graph is …
An anomaly/outlier/different pattern in the graph is …
A difference between … and …. is …
A similarity between … and … is
If this pattern continued, I predict …
A probable reason for that pattern is …
A probable reason for this difference is …
When I first looked at this graph …
The data that most stood out to me was …
The example below provides some completed sentences a Year 7 or 8 student wrote after
viewing a graph about the types of drinks consumed by Australian children (VCHPEP129 (external
). link)
Source: Figure 3 in Boden Institute, University of Sydney 2014. Evidence Brief Obesity: Sugar-
Sweetened Beverages, Obesity and Health (external
. Australian National Preventive Health Agency,
link)
Canberra.
This graph shows the types of drinks drunk by Australian children.
A general pattern I notice in the graph is that as the child's age increases, they drink
more of these kinds of drinks.
A reason for this pattern might be because older children can go out and buy their
own drinks.
A different pattern in the graph is that energy drinks go down for 14 to 16-year old.
A reason for this pattern might be because they prefer drinking other drinks.
The data that most stood out to me was that sports drinks were drunk more than
soft drinks.
Using a framework to interpret graphs
In HPE, students write with a specific purpose as they communicate their interpretations to
others. Students aim to explain, critique, and analyse real-world data relating to health, well-
being, and physical activity.
As students become more capable of interpreting data on their own, they can be given
frameworks to help structure independent analyses of graphs, whether spoken or written.
One framework to use to analyse a graph is given below. Depending on the length of analysis
and information in the graph, the framework could be used to create one paragraph or several.
Below are two samples showing how a Year 9 or 10 student has applied the framework to
interpret two different graphs (VCHPEP148 (external
). link)
Source: Manning, M., Smith, C., & Mazerolle, P. (2013). The estimated societal costs of alcohol
misuse in Australia. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice no. 454. Canberra:
Australian Institute of Criminology (external link)
Student sample response
This graph shows the estimated societal costs of alcohol misuse
in Australia. The total estimated cost exceeds $14 billion. The
largest cost relates to productivity, which accounted for 42.1% or
$6.046 billion. Traffic accidents comprised 25.5% or a quarter of
the costs ($3.662 billion). Alcohol misuse had the least cost to the
health system, costing $1.686 billion.
Figure10.3:Notifiedcasesoflaboratory-confirmedinfluenza'bymonth,Victoria,2011-2014
3.500
3,000
berofnoti fied cas
•2500
2,000
1,500
1,000
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2011 2012 2013 2104
Monthandyearofnotification
1CasesidentifiedbyVicSPINandthroughoutbreakinvestigationswereexcludedtoavoidinflatedpeaks
andtemporalclusteringofcasesarisingfromtherestrictedtimeperiodofVicSPINandactivecasefinding
inoutbreakinvestigations.
Source: Surveillance of notifiable infectious diseases in Victoria, 2011–2014
Student sample response
This graph shows the number of notified cases of laboratory-
confirmed cases of influenza in Victoria from 2011 to 2014. Each
year, there is a spike in confirmed cases, which begins in June
and lasts until October. This coincides with winter when people
are more likely to be spending time indoors. The number of
infected cases during the winter spike has also increased each
year. In 2011, the peak number of infected cases was around 800
while in 2014, the peak number is just over 3000.
Last Update: 16 March 2021 Back to top
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