Traffic by David Drew

Teaching ideas

This book shows young children how to make a survey, which is a useful skill in social studies and in science. It is also a simple introduction to number lines, tally charts and pie graphs.

Reading the book

Show the cover and ask the children to count the number of vehicles in the traffic. (There are ten.) Ask "How many different kinds of traffic vehicles can you find?" (There are four kinds: cars, trucks, bicycles and a bus.) Explain that we are going to make a survey of them. A survey is a way of counting things so that we can understand them better.

Cars (pages 2-3)

Cover the right-hand page (page 3) and ask the children if the picture on page 2 is the same as the picture on the cover. (Yes)

We have already counted the total number of vehicles. How many were there? (Ten) Now we are going to count each group: cars, trucks, bicycles and buses.

Let's start with the cars. How many can the children find? (Four) Now point to the number line at the top. Ask, "How many boxes are colored red? " (Four) Red stands for cars in this survey.

Reveal page 3. Read the words "We counted four cars."

Tally chart. Point to the tally chart on page 3. This shows how we can record the cars as we count them. Every time we see a car we make a red check mark. How many cars did we count? How many check marks are there?

Pie graph. Now point to the pie chart. How many vehicles altogether did we count? (Ten) How many slices of the pie are there? (Ten) How many slices stand for the cars? They are the red slices. (Four) So now we can say, "Four out of ten vehicles were cars."

Trucks (pages 4-5)

Again, cover the right-hand page (page 5.)

Is the picture on page 4 still the same? (Yes).

"OK, let's count the trucks." (There are three.)

Go to the number line at the top of page 4. How many boxes are colored blue? (Three) These show us the number of trucks. Blue stands for trucks in this survey. We can say "Three out of ten vehicles were trucks."

Now reveal the right-hand page (page 5). On the tally chart the number of trucks has been recorded as blue check marks. How many trucks did we record? Count the blue check marks. (Three)

In the pie chart we have added three slices of pie for the three trucks. Count the blue slices.

Bicycles (pages 6-7) and buses (pages 8-9)

Continue this pattern with the rest of the book.

On page 9 point out that the pie graph is now complete. There are four groups shown. Which is the biggest group? (Cars) Which is the smallest? (Buses) Remind the children that there are ten slices of pie. Were the cars more than half, or less than half? (Less) What if we added the cars to the trucks? They make more than half. So we could say "Most of the vehicles were cars and trucks." And so on. This is both "doing math" and talking the language of surveys.

What next?

You have been discussing kinds of transportation, but you have also shown children how to record the results of a survey.

Now the children are ready to try a simple survey for themselves. If you stay with transportation as the topic, you might ask children how they come to school. How many come by bus? How many come by car, by train, by bike or on foot? As they give their answers, one by one, add a mark to a tally chart. Afterwards you could make a pie graph of the results.

You might get more varied results if you ask, "What kinds of vehicle have you ever ridden in?" Children might then remember that they have been in a plane, or a sailboat, and so on.

Or you can conduct opinion polls (favorite foods, pets, sports). Children should participate by taking turns in recording the results.

Finally the students can work in groups of six or so, to record a tally on another topic. This time they do all the counting and recording themselves. The children can return at any time to the book Traffic to see how tally charts or pie graphs are organized.

Buy the book (USA only)

Buy the e-book (PDF) Coming soon

Visual literacy home