Tap the Train bar. Then read its top off the scale: how many children does it stand for?
This engine’s own main skill is Reading values off a bar chart. It practises compare bar-chart values alongside it.
The Train bar stops level with 30 on the scale. The lines on this chart go up in 5s, and only every other line carries a number, so the bare lines in between are the ones you have to count through. The top of the bar sits exactly on a line, so you can read it straight off. Keeping your finger level as you cross to the scale is what stops a reading landing one line out.
Step 1. Find it. Tap the bar the question names.
Step 2. Read it. Now read the scale and choose how many children that is.
What to say if they get stuck
Find the bar, row or slice the question names before you read anything. Getting the label right matters as much as the reading.
The scale does not always count up in single steps. Work out what a single line is worth before you read anything off it.
Keep your finger level as you slide from the board across to the scale. Drifting up or down by a line is the commonest slip there is.
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
How compare bar-chart values differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises one other skill, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: compare two category values on a bar chart, and it stops where one comparison or difference only.
Questions parents ask about compare bar-chart values
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Compare two category values on a bar chart. It is one of 55 named maths skills in the 11+, in the data strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
The skill map puts read a bar-chart value first. A comparison requires accurate scale reading. If compare bar-chart values keeps going wrong, that is the thing to check before doing more of this one.
Adding the two bars gives their combined total, not how many more one bar shows than the other. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Read the Caldale bar and the Ashford bar off the scale first, then take the smaller number away from the larger one.
The skill map draws the line here: One comparison or difference only. A question past that line is testing a different named maths skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The data strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to compare bar-chart values are compare line-graph change, compare table values and decode a pictogram key. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Bar Reader, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to compare bar-chart values, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Compare bar-chart values rests on something else being secure first
This skill depends on read a bar-chart value. A free diagnostic checks those alongside every other maths skill, so you find out whether the problem is here or underneath it.
