A box plot says exactly five things about a set of numbers, and reading one is knowing which five. These free printable worksheets ask for each mark off a drawn diagram — the smallest, the quartiles, the median, and the largest.
If they get stuck
The answer key prints on a separate page.
The five-number summary splits the data into four equal parts, so each section of the plot holds a quarter of the values however wide or narrow it looks. That is the sentence to say out loud, because a long whisker looks like “most of them are up here” and means the opposite — the values there are spread out, not many.
The line inside the box is the median, and it is the mark children most often misread as the middle of the box rather than the middle of the data. Nothing here asks for a plot to be drawn: building one needs data to sort and a scale to choose, a classroom job, while reading one is the skill that transfers to every summary chart afterward. The marks are read as numbers, so the answer key can check them.
One question from a sheet like this one, worked a step at a time — with a sentence saying what just happened and why.
Reading box plots, step by step