What do the problems look like?

Reading problems ask for a measure such as the interquartile range. Construction problems provide a data table and a labeled axis on which students draw the complete box plot.

What does the box actually show?

The middle half of the data. The box edges are the quartiles, the line inside is the median, and the whiskers stretch out to the smallest and largest values.

6th grade box plots

6th grade box plots worksheets

Sixth grade box-plot worksheets ask students either to calculate the interquartile range from a displayed plot or to construct a box plot from measurement data using the median-of-halves convention.

Free printable PDF worksheet, aligned to Common Core 6.SP.A.3, 6.SP.B.4, 6.SP.B.5.c.

Each print is a different sheet with its own answer key. You don't need to sign up.

The kind of problems you'll get

Read each display and answer every question.

A box plot has minimum 2, lower quartile 4, median 6, upper quartile 9 and maximum 12.
Answer: Range = 12 − 2 = 10. Interquartile range = 9 − 4 = 5.

Most problems on this sheet sit beside a picture, model or diagram, so this is the worked example the sheet itself prints. The answer key on page two prints the answer under every problem.

Every print pulls a fresh set of problems at this level, so a make-up test or a second sibling never gets the same sheet.

What's on a 6th grade sheet

The sample sheet above has 6 problems. Its answers run from 2 to 25.

Box plots. Read each display and answer every question. 6 problems per page.
Reading box plots. Read each display and answer every question. 5 problems per page.
Making box plots. Use the data to complete each box plot. Exclude the median when finding quartiles. 4 problems per page.

Every version prints on US Letter or A4, with its answer key after the problems.

How to teach this

Have your child label the five landmarks before answering anything: whisker end, box edge, middle line, box edge, whisker end. Every question is then a read or one subtraction between two of them. Range uses the outer pair, IQR uses the box pair, and the median is the one value that needs no arithmetic at all. When constructing a plot, sort the data and write the five-number summary before placing marks on the axis.

Watch for: Kids read the box edges as the smallest and largest values. The whisker ends mark those; the box edges are the quartiles. Kids confuse range with IQR. Range runs whisker to whisker across all the data; IQR runs box edge to box edge across the middle half.

Common questions about 6th grade box plots

What do the problems look like?: Reading problems ask for a measure such as the interquartile range. Construction problems provide a data table and a labeled axis on which students draw the complete box plot.
What does the box actually show?: The middle half of the data. The box edges are the quartiles, the line inside is the median, and the whiskers stretch out to the smallest and largest values.

Related worksheets

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Aligned to Common Core 6.SP.A.3, 6.SP.B.4, 6.SP.B.5.c. Reviewed by the One more sheet team. Content version 241, updated September 2026.

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