Scaled Picture Graphs Resources

For your data-driven students, scaled picture graphs are a fun and easy way to represent numbers. Worksheets feature picture graphs where one picture represents more than one. Lesson plans also help you teach students how to create their own scaled picture graphs. When your students are ready for a new approach to data, check out our scaled bar graph resources.

It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of scaled picture graphs, however, we could say that a picture is worth a number of things. Early learners are very visual. Representing numbers with images can help them understand how those numbers relate to each other.
Commonly used in money math, a scaled picture graph, otherwise known as a pictograph, is a way of representing data using pictures. The word scale is used to indicate conformity in values. Each picture in the pictograph represents the same number of objects. For example, a single image of an apple could represent one case of apples.
A necessary part of a pictograph is a legend, clearly explaining the scale or how many objects each picture represents. The body of the scaled picture graph features groups of the objects broken up into groups based on how the graph is wanting to examine the data. Perhaps a business wants to examine how many cases of apples they sell each month. In this case they would have a row for each month. In each row they would have a picture of an apple for each case of apples they sold.
Pictographs allow the reader to easily see and review sets of numbers and how they relate visually without having to do any calculations. Working with your students using the resources provided above by Education.com may help your students understand how to read and understand that data displayed in pictographs.