Session 8 — Tell a Data Story

Duration: 60 min · Format: live online · Ages: 8–11

Session goal: by the end, students can run the full data cycle — ask, collect, show, tell — find one interesting thing in their data, and present a clear one-page data story. This is the Block 2 project.

Before class — prep (5 min)

• Have the data-story steps diagram below ready to share on screen.
• Open Google Sheets in a tab for students who want to collect and chart digitally.
• Ask students to have paper, a pencil, and colours ready (and their earlier survey work, if they want to reuse it).

Agenda

0:00 · Hook (5 min)

Ask the class and take a few answers (chat or unmute):

• "If I told you 'pizza got 12 votes' — is that interesting?"
• "What if I said 'pizza beat everything else — 12 out of 20 people picked it!' — better, right?"

Reveal: data isn't just numbers — it can tell a story. Tell them that today they each become a data storyteller.

0:05 · Teach — The four-step data-story cycle (15 min)

Explain: a data story follows four steps. Share this diagram and walk through each one:

1. Ask — pick a question you care about (What game does our class love most? Cats or dogs? Favourite pizza topping?).
2. Collect — survey at least 10 people; make a neat tally or type it into Google Sheets.
3. Show — turn the counts into a chart (bar chart or pictograph) and give it a title.
4. Tell — find the interesting bit and say it in one or two sentences: "Most people chose ___." / "I was surprised that ___." / "This means ___."

⚠ Watch for the missing "Tell": many students stop at the chart. Push them to the last step — the story (the interesting finding), which is the whole point of the project.

Ask: "What's the difference between a chart and a data story?" (Answer: a chart shows the numbers; a data story says what the numbers mean.)

0:20 · Activity — Build your data story (25 min)

Have students run the full cycle and make a one-page data story. Share the checklist on screen:

• [ ] I wrote a clear question
• [ ] I collected answers from 10+ people
• [ ] I organised my data (tally or Sheets)
• [ ] I made a chart with a title
• [ ] I found one interesting thing
• [ ] I wrote my data story (1–2 sentences)
• [ ] I presented it

Circulate (or invite students to share their screen/paper) as they work. If some already have survey data from earlier sessions, let them reuse it and focus on the Show and Tell steps. Aim for each student to have a one-page data story (chart + their sentences) ready to present for about a minute.

0:45 · Check for understanding (8 min)

Have a few students present their one-page story (about 1 minute each). Then ask these aloud or drop them in the chat. Answer key (for you):

1. What are the four steps of a data story? → Ask, Collect, Show, Tell.
2. How many people should you survey, at least? → 10 or more.
3. What is an "insight"? → The one interesting thing you found in the data — the part worth telling.
4. Did the data surprise you? → Sometimes the answer is different from what we guessed — that's the best part of being a data detective.

0:53 · Wrap-up + homework (7 min)

• Celebrate Block 2: students have learned to collect, chart, and tell stories with data — the fuel behind every smart machine. Two blocks done!
• Ask one student to rate their surprise-o-meter: how surprised were they by their result, from 1 (I knew it!) to 5 (whoa, no way!)?
• Homework — Share your story: present your one-page data story to your family this week, then bring your best idea to Block 3, where we design and build a real prototype.

Teaching notes

• Correct this misconception: "the chart is the finished project." Reframe: the finding you tell is the goal — the chart is just how you show it.
• Fast finishers (extension): write a mini data report in five short parts — Question → Data → Chart → Finding → So what? — kept to one page. Add a number to the story (e.g. "Pizza won with 12 of 20 votes (60%)") using =COUNTIF and =AVERAGE in Sheets. Stretch: in Google Colab, put the counts in a list and print the total, the max, and the average.
• Low-tech fallback: the whole project works on paper — tally by hand and draw a coloured-box chart; presenting out loud needs no device.

Vocabulary

Resources

• Google Sheets — collect data and make charts.
• Create a Graph — quick, colourful charts.
• Our World in Data — see how experts tell data stories.
• Google Colab — try the Python stretch (extension).

Next session

Block 3 — Build Something Real: the grand finale — design thinking, build a prototype, and present your very own invention.