How to explain favourite sports in bar graphs to your student
23 October 2026
Bar graphs are a simple way for children to see which sports are most and least popular in a group. When you want to help your child understand how to show favourite sports in a bar graph, start by looking at the results and thinking about how each sport can be shown as a bar of a certain height.
Example question
A class of 20 students were asked about their favourite sports. The results are: Football 6, Tennis 4, Basketball 5, Swimming 3, and Rugby 2.
Step 1: Draw a bar for each sport. The height of each bar shows how many students chose that sport.
Step 2: Label the bottom (x-axis) with the sports names: Football, Tennis, Basketball, Swimming, Rugby.
Step 3: Label the side (y-axis) with numbers from 0 to 6, because 6 is the highest number of votes.
Step 4: For Football, draw a bar up to 6. For Tennis, up to 4. For Basketball, up to 5. For Swimming, up to 3. For Rugby, up to 2.
Step 5: Check the bars to see which sport is most popular and which is least popular.
Key insight: Bar graphs show favourite sports by using bars of different heights to compare numbers easily.
The correct answer is: Football is the most popular sport (6 votes) and Rugby is the least popular (2 votes).
After working through this example, your child will recognise how bar graphs make it easy to compare different choices at a glance. They can now try similar questions to practise reading and creating their own bar graphs about favourite sports.
