Step 1: Introduction to Tally Marks (number of tally marks is less than 5)
Present the students with an amount of items which is less than 5, say with 3 apples. Tell them to count the items and while they are counting them, draw 3 tally marks on a piece of paper.
Step 2: Presenting a Further Example with Less than 5 tally Marks
Present the students with another amount of items, again less than 5, say with 4 apples. Tell them to count the items and while they are counting, draw 4 tally marks on a piece of paper.
Step 3: Representing 5 items with tally marks
Now present the students with 5 items, say with 5 apples. Tell them to count them and whilst they are counting draw the tally marks. Explain that the fifth tally mark is drawn across the previous four tally marks as shown below.
Step 4: Representing numbers 1-10 with Tally Marks
It is a good idea at this point to watch the video attached to the lesson. Click here to watch video. Now it is time to ask students to represent numbers 1-10 with tally marks. They should be able to represent a quantity of 10 into two groups of 5 tally marks, with the fifth tally mark drawn across the previous 4 tally marks, each time.
Step 5: Creating a Tally Chart including the word Frequency
Encourage students to create tally charts of their own. The items classified in the tally chart need to have something in common yet they are different. For example they can create a tally chart of different fruits, different books, different coloured items, different clothes, different shoes etc. A tally chart can contain a column named frequency. Frequency shows the number of items in each group. The numbers written in the frequency column have to match the number of tally marks, each time.
Step 6: Task to consolidate understanding of Tally Charts
The lesson could be completed by practising some more through this worksheet .