Virginia SOL 3.1.c.ii

Science3rd GradeScientific and Engineering Practices

The Standard

read, interpret, and analyze data represented in pictographs and bar graphs

Virginia Standards of Learning for Science · The student will demonstrate an understanding of scientific and engineering practices by

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students use graph titles, labels, keys, and scales to find data values. They compare categories, calculate differences or totals, and make conclusions supported by the data.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student uses the key or scale correctly, including when one picture represents several objects. The student identifies greatest, least, total, and difference, then supports an answer with graph values.
Common Misconceptions: Students may count each picture as one and ignore the key. They may misread scale intervals, count grid lines instead of spaces, or confuse a category label with its value.
How to Assess It: Give students a pictograph with four ant symbols, two beetle symbols, and three butterfly symbols, where each symbol equals two insects. Ask, “Which insect was seen most, and how many more were seen than the least common insect?”

Lesson moves

Sort a tray of leaves by shape, build a floor pictograph with paper leaf symbols, then make a bar graph of the counts.
Show a pictograph where each raindrop equals two rainy days and ask, “How do you know which month had four more rainy days?”
Play Graph Detective: teams draw question cards asking for greatest, least, total, or difference, then cite graph values as evidence.
Record daily outdoor temperatures for one week, make a bar graph, and write one claim about the week’s pattern.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 3.1.c.ii, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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