Math · Grades 5–6 and 7–8

The picture that fooled us

Your child reads a chart's numbers before its picture, and spots when the picture does not match them.

Your child checks four charts the Pet made, answers a question about each one's numbers, then fixes it where it can: the bars started at zero, the fair picture chosen, the years spaced properly. If an answer is not it, the Pet says why.

Grades 5–6 and 7–8
15 min
Nothing to prepare
On the screen

Free to sign up.

Is it a good fit?

Ready if Your child reads a bar chart and takes away two-digit numbers.
Too much today? Start with Measure me: a chart of your child's own numbers, drawn fairly, before charts that trick.
Too easy? The Grade 7–8 level: how many times as many, a rise in every 100, the space a picture fills, and years spaced to fool you.

What your child practises

Reading a chart's scale
How many more and how many times
Per hundred
Area when a picture grows

Listen for

“Where does it start? Those bars don't start at zero.”

If your child says something like this, in their own words, the idea has landed. Finishing the rounds means they took part; this is the learning.

Your part

Nothing for the game itself
Each question has a Read it to me button

Take it off the screen (optional)

Find a chart on a cereal box, a sign or in a newspaper together, and read out where its numbers start.

The full design

What it is

A chart can make the same numbers look very different, so read the numbers before the picture. The Pet made four charts and believes what they seem to say. Your child reads the numbers, finds the trick, and redraws the ones that can be drawn fairly.

How it goes

The Pet's claim sits over its chart. Your child answers a question about the numbers, then fixes the chart where it can be fixed: moves where the bars start down to zero and watches them even out, chooses the fair picture of the cookies, or spaces the years by the years and watches the line bend. The stretched line and the pie end on a second question instead: how much sales really grew, and how much a whole pie is. When an answer is not it, the Pet says why from the chart's own numbers. Four charts make a game.

The Pet

It is the one fooled, never your child: "Hamster won by a mile!" It asks your child to read the numbers first, and when a chart is fixed it says what the trick hid. Its dare is the next step up: at 5–6, a chart whose years are spaced to fool you; at the top, draw two charts of the same numbers, one fair and one tricky, and see if a grown-up spots it.

By band

One play is four charts, easiest first: bars that start at 46 instead of zero, a line stretched tall, and a picture of a jar twice as tall and twice as wide. 5–6: how many more votes and cups, how many times as many cookies, and a pie whose parts add up to 130%. 7–8: how many times as many votes (about 1.1, though the bars look 3 times as tall), a rise of 3 on 20 as 15 in every 100, the space a jar twice as tall and wide fills (4 times), and years 2000, 2010, 2020, 2022 and 2024 spaced evenly, so a garden that sped up looks straight.

What it grows

Reading a graph against its scale is in the standards from the first bar graphs (Common Core 2.MD.D, 3.MD.B) to the statistics strand (6.SP.B, summarising and describing data); a scale that does not start at zero, a picture that grows in two directions and uneven intervals are the classic ways a chart misleads (the external review's M8). The 7–8 rungs add ratio and percent (6.RP, 7.RP) and area under scaling (7.G.A.1).

Done, and what counts as evidence

Done means the four charts checked. "Read the numbers before the picture" is an observation you may keep. The best record is off the screen: a chart on a cereal box or in a newspaper, its bottom number read out loud.

What's personal

Nothing: the numbers are made up about the Pet's class, its lemonade and its cookies, and the game says so. No family facts are used.